20 nm Metamorphic HEMT technology for terahertz monolithic integrated circuits

A metamorphic high electron mobility transistor (mHEMT) technology with 20 nm gate length for manufacturing of terahertz monolithic integrated circuits (TMICs) is presented. The passive elements include up to four interconnection metallization layers separated by low-k dielectrics (BCB), SiN and air which can be used to realize front side signal lines. Shielding the substrate from the electromagnetic field on the wafer front side eliminates the need of a costly back side process including wafer thinning, through substrate via etching and back side metallization. The semiconductor heterostructure of the mHEMT comprises a strained pure InAs channel with high electron mobility and high electron density for proper device scaling. The realized mHEMTs achieve a source resistance r_S of 0.12 Ωmm which is required to minimize resistive losses in combination with an extrinsic maximum transconductance g_{m_max} of 2850 mS/mm. Elaborated on wafer calibration procedures and optimized test transistor layouts were used to improve the precision of the S-parameter measurements up to a frequency of 450 GHz which than could be used for model extraction. The presented 20 nm mHEMT technology was employed for the design of a compact eight stage low-noise amplifier (LNA) using miniaturized microstrip lines on BCB. The measured small signal gain of the LNA exceeds 15 dB from 500-635 GHz.