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Chang M, Qian J, Li Z, Cheng X, Wang Y, Fan L, Cao J, Ding L. Ku-Band Mixers Based on Random-Oriented Carbon Nanotube Films. Nanomaterials (Basel) 2024; 14:450. [PMID: 38470780 DOI: 10.3390/nano14050450] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/31/2023] [Revised: 02/21/2024] [Accepted: 02/27/2024] [Indexed: 03/14/2024]
Abstract
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are a type of nanomaterial that have excellent electrical properties such as high carrier mobility, high saturation velocity, and small inherent capacitance, showing great promise in radio frequency (RF) applications. Decades of development have been made mainly on cut-off frequency and amplification; however, frequency conversion for RF transceivers, such as CNT-based mixers, has been rarely reported. In this work, based on randomly oriented carbon nanotube films, we focused on exploring the frequency conversion capability of CNT-based RF mixers. CNT-based RF transistors were designed and fabricated with a gate length of 50 nm and gate width of 100 μm to obtain nearly 30 mA of total current and 34 mS of transconductance. The Champion RF transistor has demonstrated cut-off frequencies of 78 GHz and 60 GHz for fT and fmax, respectively. CNT-based mixers achieve high conversion gain from -11.4 dB to -17.5 dB at 10 to 15 GHz in the X and Ku bands. Additionally, linearity is achieved with an input third intercept (IIP3) of 18 dBm. It is worth noting that the results from this work have no matching technology or tuning instrument assistance, which lay the foundations for the application of Ku band transceivers integrated with CNT amplifiers.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mengnan Chang
- Key Laboratory of Luminescence & Optical Information, Ministry of Education, School of Physical Science and Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
| | - Jiale Qian
- Hunan Institute of Advanced Sensing and Information Technology, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan 411105, China
| | - Zhaohui Li
- Key Laboratory of Luminescence & Optical Information, Ministry of Education, School of Physical Science and Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
| | - Xiaohan Cheng
- Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
| | - Ying Wang
- Key Laboratory of Luminescence & Optical Information, Ministry of Education, School of Physical Science and Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
| | - Ling Fan
- Key Laboratory of Luminescence & Optical Information, Ministry of Education, School of Physical Science and Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
| | - Juexian Cao
- Hunan Institute of Advanced Sensing and Information Technology, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan 411105, China
| | - Li Ding
- Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices and Center for Carbon-Based Electronics, School of Electronics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
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Qian J, Cheng X, Zhou J, Cao J, Ding L. Aligned Carbon Nanotubes-Based Radiofrequency Transistors for Amplitude Amplification and Frequency Conversion at Millimeter Wave Band. ACS Nano 2023. [PMID: 37464538 DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.3c02739] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 07/20/2023]
Abstract
Aligned carbon nanotubes (ACNTs) have been considered as a promising candidate semiconductor with great potential in radiofrequency (RF) electronics due to their high carrier mobility/saturation velocity and small intrinsic capacitance. However, almost all of previously reported works focused on only the cutoff frequency, which is far from enough for practical RF application. In this work, given the speed advantage of ACNTs, we further explore amplitude amplification and frequency conversion capability of ACNTs based RF devices simultaneously, which are two basic functions in RF electronics. Considering there is no de-embedding process for amplification/conversion and reduction power loss, multifinger configuration RF transistors (still having current density around 1 mA/μm) were fabricated with cutoff frequency and maximum oscillation frequency exceeding 150 and 130 GHz, respectively. Based on dedicated ACNTs based RF FETs, we demonstrate almost 7 dB power gain (S21) with over 40 GHz 3-dB bandwidth for amplification and from -12.7 to -17 dB of conversion gain with over 25 dBm IIP3 (input third-order intercept point) of linearity for conversion simultaneously operating at 30 GHz in millimeter wave (mmWave) band both without any tuning instruments and matching technology assistance. The performance achieved here is the best among all the nanomaterials at the mmWave band.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jiale Qian
- Hunan Institute of Advanced Sensing and Information Technology, Xiangtan University, Hunan 411105, China
| | - Xiaohan Cheng
- Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices and Center for Carbon-based Electronics, School of Electronics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
- Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
| | - Jianshuo Zhou
- Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices and Center for Carbon-based Electronics, School of Electronics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
| | - Juexian Cao
- Hunan Institute of Advanced Sensing and Information Technology, Xiangtan University, Hunan 411105, China
| | - Li Ding
- Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices and Center for Carbon-based Electronics, School of Electronics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
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Cherniak G, Nemirovsky A, Nemirovsky Y. Revisiting the Modeling of the Conversion Gain of CMOS Image Sensors with a New Stochastic Approach. Sensors (Basel) 2022; 22:7620. [PMID: 36236717 PMCID: PMC9570612 DOI: 10.3390/s22197620] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/15/2022] [Revised: 10/02/2022] [Accepted: 10/06/2022] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
A stochastic model for characterizing the conversion gain of Active Pixel Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors (APS) with at least four transistors is presented. This model, based on the fundamental principles of electronic noise, may provide a reliable calibration of the gain conversion, which is one of the most important parameters of CMOS Image Sensor pixels. The new model revisits the "gold standard" ratio method of the measured variance of the shot noise to the mean value. The model assumes that shot noise is the dominant noise source of the pixel. The microscopic random time-dependent voltage of any shot noise electron charging the junction capacitance C of the sensing node may have either an exponential form or a step form. In the former case, a factor of 1/2 appears in the variance to the mean value, namely, q/2C is obtained. In the latter case, the well-established ratio q/C remains, where q is the electron charge. This correction factor affects the parameters that are based on the conversion gain, such as quantum efficiency and noise. The model has been successfully tested for advanced image sensors with six transistors fabricated in a commercial FAB, applying a CMOS 180 nm technology node with four metals. The stochastic modeling is corroborated by measurements of the quantum efficiency and simulations with advanced software (Lumerical).
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Affiliation(s)
- Gil Cherniak
- Electrical Engineering Department, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3200003, Israel
| | - Amikam Nemirovsky
- Department of Electrical Engineering, Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee, Tzemah 1513200, Israel
| | - Yael Nemirovsky
- Electrical Engineering Department, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3200003, Israel
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Piechaczek DS, Schrey O, Ligges M, Hosticka B, Kokozinski R. Anti-Blooming Clocking for Time-Delay Integration CCDs. Sensors (Basel) 2022; 22:7520. [PMID: 36236619 PMCID: PMC9571889 DOI: 10.3390/s22197520] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/02/2022] [Revised: 09/27/2022] [Accepted: 09/28/2022] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
This paper presents an investigation of the responsivity of a time-delay integration (TDI) charge-coupled device that employs anti-blooming clocking and uses a varying number of TDI stages. The influence of charge blooming caused by unused TDI stages in a TDI deployed selection scheme is shown experimentally, and an anti-blooming clocking mechanism is analyzed. The impact of blooming on sensor characteristics, such as the responsivity, the conversion gain, and the signal-to-noise ratio, is investigated. A comparison of the measurements with and without this anti-blooming clocking mechanism is presented and discussed in detail.
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Affiliation(s)
- Denis Szymon Piechaczek
- Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems, Finkenstr. 61, 47057 Duisburg, Germany
| | - Olaf Schrey
- Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems, Finkenstr. 61, 47057 Duisburg, Germany
| | - Manuel Ligges
- Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems, Finkenstr. 61, 47057 Duisburg, Germany
| | - Bedrich Hosticka
- Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems, Finkenstr. 61, 47057 Duisburg, Germany
- Department of Electronic Components and Circuits, University of Duisburg-Essen, Bismarckstr. 81, 47057 Duisburg, Germany
| | - Rainer Kokozinski
- Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems, Finkenstr. 61, 47057 Duisburg, Germany
- Department of Electronic Components and Circuits, University of Duisburg-Essen, Bismarckstr. 81, 47057 Duisburg, Germany
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Tian M, Li X, Li T, Gao Q, Xiong X, Hu Q, Wang M, Wang X, Wu Y. High-Performance CVD Bernal-Stacked Bilayer Graphene Transistors for Amplifying and Mixing Signals at High Frequencies. ACS Appl Mater Interfaces 2018; 10:20219-20224. [PMID: 29847910 DOI: 10.1021/acsami.8b04065] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/27/2023]
Abstract
Tunable bandgap can be induced in Bernal-stacked bilayer graphene by a perpendicularly electric displacement field. Here, we carry out a comprehensive study on the material synthesis of CVD Bernal-stacked bilayer graphene and devices for amplifying and mixing at high frequencies. The transistors show large output current density with excellent current saturation with high intrinsic voltage gain up to 77. Positive extrinsic forward power gain | S21|2 has been obtained up to 5.6 GHz as well as high conversion gain of -7 dB for the mixers. The conversion gain dependence on tunable on/off ratio of the transistors has also been discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mengchuan Tian
- Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center and School of Optical and Electronic Information , Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074 , China
| | - Xuefei Li
- Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center and School of Optical and Electronic Information , Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074 , China
| | - Tiaoyang Li
- Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center and School of Optical and Electronic Information , Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074 , China
| | - Qingguo Gao
- Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center and School of Optical and Electronic Information , Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074 , China
| | - Xiong Xiong
- Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center and School of Optical and Electronic Information , Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074 , China
| | - Qianlan Hu
- Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center and School of Optical and Electronic Information , Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074 , China
| | - Mengfei Wang
- Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center and School of Optical and Electronic Information , Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074 , China
| | - Xin Wang
- Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center and School of Optical and Electronic Information , Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074 , China
| | - Yanqing Wu
- Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center and School of Optical and Electronic Information , Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074 , China
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