6.2 W/Mm and Record 33.8% PAE at 94 GHz From N-Polar GaN Deep Recess MIS-HEMTs With ALD Ru Gates

• Published in: IEEE microwave and wireless components letters Vol. 31; no. 6; pp. 748 - 751
• Main Authors: Liu, Wenjian, Romanczyk, Brian, Guidry, Matthew, Hatui, Nirupam, Wurm, Christian, Li, Weiyi, Shrestha, Pawana, Zheng, Xun, Keller, Stacia, Mishra, Umesh K.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.06.2021
• Subjects: <italic xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">W -band; Density measurement; Efficiency; Electrical resistance measurement; Gain; Gallium nitride; GaN; HEMTs; high electron mobility transistor (HEMT); Logic gates; N-polar; power amplifiers; Power generation
• ISSN: 1531-1309; 1558-1764
• DOI: 10.1109/LMWC.2021.3067228

This letter reports on the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">W </tex-math></inline-formula>-band power performance of N-polar GaN deep recess MIS-high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) using a new atomic layer deposition (ALD) ruthenium (Ru) gate metallization process. The deep recess structure is utilized to control the DC-RF dispersion and increase the conductivity in the access regions. The ALD Ru effectively fills the narrow T-gate stems aiding realization of shorter gate lengths with lower gate resistance than in prior work. In this work, the gate length was scaled down to 48 nm, resulting in the demonstration of a record high 8.1-dB linear transducer gain measured at 94 GHz by load pull. This increased gain has enabled a record 33.8% power-added efficiency (PAE) with an associated output power density (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">P_{\mathrm {O}} </tex-math></inline-formula>) of 6.2 W/mm.