A low-voltage, low-power microwave SOI MOSFET

Summary form only given. Recently, it has been demonstrated that the use of high-resistivity SOI (SIMOX) substrates (5,000 and 10,000 Ω.cm) yields MOSFETs which offer interesting microwave performances. Indeed unity-gain frequencies (f_T) of 14 and 23.6 GHz and maximum oscillation frequencies (f_max) of 21 and 32 GHz have been reported for effective gate lengths of 0.36 and 0.25 μm, respectively, and using supply voltages ranging from 3 to 5 volts. Such devices can be integrated with planar lines to implement MMIC circuits. These transistors were fabricated using a dedicated MOS process, called MICROX^TM, which uses non-standard CMOS features, such as a metal (gold) gate and air-bridge metallisation. In this work, the high-frequency performances of microwave transistors fabricated using a standard fully-depleted SOI CMOS process are described. These devices are, therefore, compatible with analog and digital circuits fabricated using the same low-cost process