A 1.6-watt high efficiency X-band power MMIC

The design and performance of a two-stage molecular-beam-epitaxial (MBE) monolithic power amplifier chip are presented. The MMIC (monolithic microwave integrated circuit) contains full interstage matching, partial matching at the input, and no match at the output. When matched to 50 Omega at input and output using off-chip circuitry, the MMIC demonstrated best overall performance of 32.1 dBm (0.450 W/mm), 33.4%, and 13.2 dB of power, power-added-efficiency (PAE), and associated gain, respectively, across the 8.3-10.7-GHz band. The PAE was as high as 36% in parts of the band. The average performance for 23 devices from 8 wafers from 3 different runs, across the 8.5-10.5-GHz band, was 31.6 dBm (0.430 W/mm), 30%, and 13.1 dB. The chip size is 0.074 in.*0.043 in.*0.003 in. (1.88 mm*1.09 mm).<>