Development of Compound Semiconductor FET and Integrated Low -Voltage RF MEMS Switch Technology for Reconfigurable MMIC Applications

69 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002.The world of high-frequency electronics is a varied field with many competing technologies striving to meet the requirements of future systems. Compound semiconductors have had a significant impact on this field, finding commercial success in millimeter-wave integrated circuit (MMIC) and optoelectronic applications due to material advantages over established silicon technology. This work presents results from three different compound semiconductor device technologies that each have appealing characteristics for various uses: the ion-implanted GaAs MESFET, the AlGaN/GaN HEMT, and the RF MEMS switch. The MESFET is a relatively mature technology that has proven to be a low-cost solution for many MMIC uses, and this work will describe enhancement- and depletion-mode 0.12-mum-gate device development with ft higher than 120 GHz. Wide bandgap semiconductors are an attractive device for high power, and the AlGaN/GaN HEMT structure presented here features a binary barrier layer to improve carrier confinement and increase current density. A metal-contact RF MEMS shunt switch has been developed as a low-loss, wide bandwidth passive component, and recent work has focused on achieving good reliability with low actuation voltages. A brief description of the potential integration of RF MEMS switches into reconfigurable circuits is also included.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD