A SOI-RF-CMOS technology on high resistivity SIMOX substrates for microwave applications to 5 GHz

A silicon-on-insulator (SOI) RF complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology for microwave applications up to 5 GHz has been developed. The technology is based on ultra large scale integration (ULSI) CMOS processing using a high resistivity separation through implanted oxygen (SIMOX) substrate of typically 10 k/spl Omega/cm. Dedicated RF n-channel and RF p-channel MOSFET's with an effective channel length of 0.20 and 0.40 /spl mu/m have been fabricated using a multiple gate finger design. Maximum frequencies of operation f/sub max/ of 46 GHz (NMOS) and 16 GHz (PMOS) have been measured. Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM) capacitances with up to 63 pF with 70 nF/cm/sup 2/, planar inductances with up to 25 nH and a quality factor up to 12 and coplanar waveguides with a loss <2.8 dB/cm at 5 GHz are monolithically integrated in the technology without additional processes and materials. Using this SOI-CMOS technology we have fabricated integrated silicon RF circuits, e.g., amplifiers, oscillators, and mixers, operating in the 2 GHz range.