High performance MEMS 0.18µm RF-CMOS transformers

Authors:
Shlomo Katz;Igor Brouk;Sara Stolyarova;Shye Shapira;Yael Nemirovsky
Affiliations:
Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, 32000, Israel;Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, 32000, Israel;Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, 32000, Israel;TowerJazz, Ramat Gavriel Industrial Area, P.O. Box 619, Migdal Haemek, 23105, Israel;Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, 32000, Israel
Venue:
Microelectronics Journal
Year:
2012

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A micromachining technology for integrating low-loss GHz RF passives on non-high-resistivity low-cost silicon MCM substrate

Microelectronic Engineering

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Abstract

This work presents the application of a front-side maskless MEMS process to improve the performance of RF-CMOS transformers. High-frequency parasitic effects are much diminished, as oxide and substrate material are etched away. The passivated metal surface prevents damage to the transformer, and to other circuits, which use metal layers as self-aligned etch masks. Device self-resonant frequency was improved by 20%. At 18GHz, device quality factor rose from 0.5 to 6, and at 50GHz, maximum available gain was increased by 49%. The process's low cost relative to other MEMS optimization methods with similar results makes this process attractive for the use of transformers in system-on-chip design.