First successful fabrication of high-performance all-refractory-metal (Ta-Au) GaAs FET using very highly doped N+-layers and nonalloyed ohmic contacts

An all-refractory-metal GaAs MESFET (ARFET) making use of a Ta Schottky barrier with a thick gold overlayer for the source, gate and drain, and very highly doped N+-layers (2x1019 cm-3) to achieve low-resistivity nonalloyed ohmic contacts, has been successfully fabricated. These have a 400 ¿m gate periphery and 0.6 ¿m gate length and measured an associated gain of 10.22 dB and a noise figure of 2.14 dB at 8 GHz. The ARFETs were fabricated on epitaxial layers grown by MBE. Only one mask was used to simultaneously define source, gate and drain regions via a plasma dry-etch technique.