Title :
A low loss, 5.5 GHz-20 GHz monolithic balun
Author :
Tutt, M.N. ; Tserng, H.Q. ; Ketterson, A.
Author_Institution :
Corp. Res. & Dev. Lab., Texas Instrum. Inc., Dallas, TX, USA
Abstract :
A low-loss monolithic Marchand balun has been designed and fabricated using polyimide as the inter-metal dielectric. The measured return loss is less than -10 dB from 5.5 GHz to 28 GHz. The balun loss is less than 0.7 dB over the 6 GHz to 21 GHz operating band. This is the lowest loss ever reported for such a balun. The excellent loss is the result of using a relatively thick polyimide layer (10 /spl mu/m) as the inter-metal dielectric. This balun has been applied to HBT and pHEMT amplifiers with second harmonic components suppressed >40 dB, even in compression, demonstrating very good push-pull operation.
Keywords :
HEMT integrated circuits; MMIC amplifiers; baluns; bipolar MMIC; dielectric thin films; field effect MMIC; heterojunction bipolar transistors; losses; polymer films; 5.5 to 20 GHz; HBT amplifiers; balun loss; monolithic Marchand balun; pHEMT amplifiers; polyimide inter-metal dielectric; push-pull operation; return loss; second harmonic components; Dielectric loss measurement; Dielectric losses; Dielectric measurements; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; Impedance matching; Loss measurement; Operational amplifiers; PHEMTs; Polyimides; Silicon compounds;
Conference_Titel :
Microwave Symposium Digest, 1997., IEEE MTT-S International
Conference_Location :
Denver, CO, USA
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-3814-6
DOI :
10.1109/MWSYM.1997.602953
