Materials and Integration Strategies for Modern RF Integrated Circuits

Abstract

The DARPA Microsystems Technology Office is developing revolutionary materials, devices, and integration techniques for meeting the RF integrated circuit performance requirements for advanced modern RF systems. DARPA is enabling these systems through systematic development of materials and devices, circuits, and integration technologies for compound semiconductors. The DARPA Nitride Electronic Next-Generation Technology (NEXT) program is developing high performance nitride transistors for high-speed RF, analog and mixed signal electronics, thus overcoming the Johnson figure of merit limits to achieving simultaneous high-speed operation and high breakdown voltage. The DARPA Microscale Power Conversion (MPC) program is developing nitride-based technology to enable dynamic envelope-tracking power conversion embedded in RF radiating elements. The DARPA Diverse Accessible Heterogeneous Integration (DAHI) program is developing transistor-scale heterogeneous integration processes to intimately combine advanced compound semiconductor (CS) devices, as well as other emerging materials and devices, with high-density silicon CMOS technology. Taken together, these programs are addressing many of the critical challenges for next-generation RF modules and seek to revolutionize DoD capabilities in this area.

A Novel Reconfigurable GaN Based Fully Solid-State Microwave Power Module for Communications/Radar Applications

“…Our link budget calculations indicate that the SSMPM with P sat = 40 W when coupled to a 10 cm X-band transmit antenna on a low Earth orbiting (900 km) satellite can close a 1 Gbps (QPSK) data downlink to a 1 m receive antenna on ground with 3 dB margin. Leveraging upon compound semiconductor devices and novel materials [7] will enable the monolithic heterogeneous integration of GaN plus CMOS for realization of a compact SSMPM. The above results indicate that a single SSMPM is capable of being dynamically reconfigured to serve multiple roles such as an amplifier for TT&C, telecommunications, and radar onboard future Earth and planetary exploration spacecrafts.…”

“…However, due to the push for developing small satellites with enhanced system capabilities/ performance at lower cost, it is advantageous to develop a single wideband, reconfigurable high-power, high-efficiency SSMPM that can operate at multiple frequency bands depending on the need at any given time. Innovations in compound semiconductor materials, devices, and circuits to increase the functionality and reconfigureability of RF systems are reported in [6], [7].…”

Recognition of Ethylene Plasma Spectra 1D Data Based on Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

“…It has been widely used in the fields of plasma etching, material processing [1][2][3], aerospace plasma propulsion [4,5], etc. However, as the integration density and complexity of semiconductor devices continue to increase in integrated circuits [6], the shrinking size imposes increasingly stringent requirements on the precision of processes such as etching and materials processing [7,8]. And it is an indispensable means of developing some diagnostics for process technologies at a higher level in the plasma industry [9][10][11].…”