Gallium arsenide IC technology for power supplies on chip

This research presents a power IC technology platform based on AlGaAs/InGaAs/AlGaAs pseudomorphic field effect transistors (pHEMTs) on a GaAs substrate. A quantitative assessment of a foundry-available 11 V GaAs pHEMT process indicates that due to their superior material properties, the intrinsic figure of merit for pHEMT switching devices show an order of magnitude improvement over the state-of-the-art Silicon NMOS transistors. The characterization results GaAs pHEMTs with a breakdown voltage up to 47V is presented and shown to be comparable to GaN based transistors for power switching applications. An integrated pHEMT DC-DC converter that can switch at frequencies above 100 MHz are demonstrated. A 4.2 V pHEMT buck converter designed for envelope tracking applications achieved 88% conversion efficiency at 100 MHz.