A 68% PAE, GaAs power MESFET operating at 2.3 V drain bias for low distortion power applications

A high-efficient GaAs power metal semiconductor field effect transistor operating at a drain voltage of 2.3 V has been developed for low distortion power applications. The device has been fabricated on an epitaxial layer with a high-low doped structure grown by molecular beam epitaxy. The MESFET with a gate length of 0.8 μm and a total gate width of 21.16 mm showed a maximum drain current of 5.9 A at V_gs =0.5 V, a knee voltage of 1.0 V and a gate-to-drain breakdown voltage of 28 V. The MESFET tested at a 2.3 V drain bias and a 900 MHz operation frequency displayed the best power-added efficiency of 68% with an output power of 31.3 dBm. The associate power gain at 20 dBm input power and the linear gain were 11.3 dB and 16.0 dB, respectively. The power characteristics of the device operating under a bias of 2 V exhibit power-added efficiency of 67% and output power of 30.1 dBm at an input power of 20 dBm. Two tone test measured at 900.00 MHz and 900.03 MHz shows that 3rd-order intermodulation and power-added efficiency at an output power of 27 dBm were -30.6 dBc and 36%, respectively, which are good for CDMA digital applications. A third-order intercept point and a linearity figure-of-merit were measured to be 49.5 dBm and 53.8, respectively