Production Technology Development for High Yield, High Performance X-Band Monolithic Power and Low Noise Amplifiers

A production technology for high yield and high performance MMIC's has been developed. Two stage X-band power amplifier and low noise amplifiers were used as test vehicles in this producibility study. The power amplifier chips have consistently demonstrated a 1.5 watt output power with 9 dB gain and 20% power added efficiency. The low noise amplifier chips have achieved a reproducible performance of less than 3 dB noise figure with 20 dB gain. Producibility improvement of MMIC chip fabrication has achieved an average yield well in excess of 10%.