Fabrication and characterization of planar integrated Schottky devices for very high frequency mixers

Many millimeter-wave mixers and frequency multipliers today still employ a whisker contacted Schottky diode as the nonlinear device. In order to reduce the risk and assembly cost associated with these critical receiver components for NASA´s present and future space missions, the authors have developed a novel fabrication procedure that integrates a planar Schottky diode with the mixer circuitry thus greatly simplifying the assembly and testing of the diode circuits. The process and DC results obtained so far will be discussed along with some preliminary RF results at 200 GHz