Ku-Band Mixers Based on Random-Oriented Carbon Nanotube Films

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.

Heterogeneous and Monolithic 3D Integration of III-V-Based Radio Frequency Devices on Si CMOS Circuits

Next-generation wireless communication such as sixth-generation (6G) and beyond is expected to require high-frequency, multifunctionality, and power-efficiency systems. A III-V compound semiconductor is a promising technology for high-frequency applications, and a Si complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) is the never-beaten technology for highly integrated digital circuits. To harness the advantages of these two technologies, monolithic integration of III-V and Si electronics is beneficial, so that there have been everlasting efforts to accomplish the monolithic integration. Considering that the on horizon 6G wireless communication requires faster and more energy-efficient system-on-chip technologies, it is imperative to realize a radio frequency (RF) system in which III-V technology and Si CMOS technology are integrated at a device level. Here we report heterogeneous and monolithic three-dimensional (3D) analog/RF-digital mixed-signal integrated circuits that contain two types of InGaAs high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) designed for high f_T and f_MAX in the top and Si CMOS mixed-signal circuits consisting of an analog-to-digital converter and digital-to-analog converter in the bottom. A high unity current gain cutoff frequency of 448 GHz and unity power gain cutoff frequency of 742 GHz have been achieved by the f_T oriented and f_MAX oriented InGaAs HEMTs, respectively, without being affected by mixed-signal interference. At the same time, the bottom Si CMOS circuits provide valid signals without any performance degradation by the integration process.

Gigahertz Field-Effect Transistors with CMOS-Compatible Transfer-Free Graphene

High-quality graphene grown on metal-free substrates represents a vital milestone that provides an atomic clean interface and a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor-compatible manufacturing process for electronic applications. We report a scalable approach to fabricate radio frequency field-effect transistors with a graphene channel grown directly on the sapphire substrate using the technique of remote-catalyzed chemical vapor deposition (CVD). A mushroom-shaped AlO _x top gate is used to allow the self-aligned drain/source contacts, yielding remarkable increase of device transconductance and reduction of the associated parasitic resistance. The quality of thus-grown graphene is reflected in the high extrinsic cutoff frequency and maximum oscillation frequency of 10.1 and 5.6 GHz for the graphene channel of length 200 nm and width 80 μm, respectively, potentially comparable with those of transferred CVD graphene at the same channel length and holding promise for applications in high-speed wireless communications.