Systematic characterization of Silicon IMPATT diode for Monolithic E-band amplifier design

A systematic characterization procedure of Silicon IMPATT (IMPact ionization Avalanche Transit-Time) diode is introduced in this work. DC characterization consists of current-voltage (I-V) and capacity-voltage (C-V) measurements. RF small signal characterization is performed by the vector network analyzer (VNA). By combining the measured S-parameters of the 30×2 μm² IMPATT diode and simulated data of a short ended coplanar waveguide (CPW), an E-band amplifier design flow based on SIMMWIC (Silicon Monolithic mm-Wave Integrated Circuits) technology is as proof of concept presented. According to the simulation results, the maximum gain of the designed amplifier achieves 34.4 dB at 67.8 GHz with 30 mA biasing current. With different biasing currents (20 ~ 40 mA) the avalanche frequency of the embedded IMPATT diode could be varied from 71.3 GHz to 91.5 GHz. This leads to an 8.6 GHz (62.8 ~ 71.4 GHz) dynamic tuning range of the amplification frequency.