Very High Efficiency and Low Cost Power Metamorphic HEMT MMIC Technology

P.C. Chao, K.C. Hwang, D.W. Tu, J.S.M. Liu, O. Tang, K. Nichols
Sanders, A Lockheed Martin Company
NHQ6-1551, 65 Spit Brook Rd., Nashua, NH  03061

A successful development of a very high efficiency 0.1mm power Metamorphic HEMT (MHEMT) MMIC technology is reported.  At 20GHz, an output power of 136mW was obtained with excellent power added efficiency of 60.2% and a record 17.1dB power gain.  This device also produced an output power density of 0.51W/mm at V_ds=3.5V.  At 60GHz, the MHEMT technology delivered 185mW (0.31W/mm) with a very high 41.2% power added efficiency and 6.9dB power gain in a single stage MMIC.  These represent the state-of-the-art power MHEMT/MMIC results and are comparable to the best InP HEMT/MMIC performance.  Since it uses a GaAs substrate, the MHEMT technology is scaleable for 6" low-cost manufacturing