Voltage Controlled GaN-on-Si HFET Power Oscillator Using Thin-Film Ferroelectric Varactor Tuning

Author

Victor, Alan ; Nath, Jayesh ; Ghosh, Dipankar ; Aygun, Seymen ; Nagy, Walter ; Maria, Jon-Paul ; Kingon, Angus I. ; Steer, Michael B.

Author_Institution

Microwave Commun. Div., Harris Corp., Morrisville, NC

fYear

2006

fDate

10-15 Sept. 2006

Firstpage

87

Lastpage

90

Abstract

A 1.6 GHz power oscillator with a GaN-on-Si heterostructure field effect transistor (HFET) is reported. The voltage-controlled oscillator used a thin-film barium strontium titanate (BST) interdigital varactor as the tuning element. The surface-mount varactor was fabricated using sputtered BST film and copper metallization on alumina. An output power of 1.6 W (32 dBm) is obtained with a DC conversion efficiency of 25.5%. Flat tuning sensitivity of 500 kHz/V, 49 MHz linear frequency tuning, and power flatness of better than 0.5 dB are obtained with 0-100 V tuning voltage. The maximum oscillator phase noise is -81.4 dBc/Hz at 100 kHz offset

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; UHF oscillators; alumina; barium compounds; copper; elemental semiconductors; ferroelectric capacitors; field effect transistor circuits; gallium compounds; high electron mobility transistors; metallisation; silicon; thin film capacitors; varactors; voltage-controlled oscillators; wide band gap semiconductors; 0 to 100 V; 1.6 GHz; 1.6 W; 49 MHz; Al₂O₃; BaSrTiO₃; Cu; DC conversion efficiency; GaN-Si; GaN-on-Si HFET power oscillator; GaN-on-Si heterostructure field effect transistor; alumina; copper metallization; flat tuning sensitivity; linear frequency tuning; oscillator phase noise; surface-mount varactor; thin-film barium strontium titanate interdigital varactor; thin-film ferroelectric varactor tuning; voltage controlled oscillator; Binary search trees; Ferroelectric materials; HEMTs; MODFETs; Sputtering; Transistors; Tuning; Varactors; Voltage control; Voltage-controlled oscillators; AlGaN/GaN; BST; GaN; GaN-on-Si; HFET; VCO; ferroelectric films; gallium nitride; master oscillator; power oscillators; strontium titanate; varactor; voltage controlled oscillator;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Conference, 2006. 36th European

Conference_Location

Manchester

Print_ISBN

2-9600551-6-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/EUMC.2006.281206

Filename

4057753