A power HEMT production process for high-efficiency Ka-band MMIC power amplifiers

The authors have developed a reproducible, high yield and high performance power HEMT Ka-band MMIC production process based on pseudomorphic AlGaAs/InGaAs/GaAs HEMTs. The details of the fabrication process and Ka-band MMIC power amplifier performance from 60 wafers are presented. State-of-the-art power performance have been achieved on both devices and MMICs. Single-stage MMICs with 400 /spl mu/m devices have demonstrated output power of 240 mW (0.6 W/mm) at 37 GHz with a power gain of 7.8 dB and power-added efficiency of 40%. The Ka-band MMIC power amplifiers have demonstrated output power of 1.3 W, 9 dB gain and 24% power added efficiency. Furthermore, the power MMIC HEMT process demonstrated a RF MMIC circuit yield of 25.8% for a total of 6936 possible chips from 60 wafers.<>