Heterogeneous Integration Brings Compound Semiconductors into the Age of RF CMOS

By J. Buckwalter, J. Kim, D. Hodge, M. Tom, N. Vong, M. Soler, B. Coy, A. Dinkelacker, M. J. Kennedy and F. Herrault, 
PseudolithIC, Santa Barbara, Calif.

Heterogeneous integration promises a new era of high performance, mmWave integrated circuit (IC) technology that leverages diverse semiconductor materials from different foundries to realize a stable and distributed manufacturing ecosystem. While commercial markets have driven large-scale integration of RF silicon or silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS processes, the underlying potential of these technologies to meet future requirements for satellite, wideband or defense systems is constrained to the physics of silicon.

Silicon technologies have become undifferentiated commodity solutions that support high volume manufacturing. PseudolithIC’s goal is to drive down the cost of compound semiconductor-based MMICs by an order of magnitude while harnessing CMOS RF, analog and digital circuits to complement the capability of compound semiconductors.

Compound semiconductor devices play a critical role in front-end RFICs, such as beamformers or transmit and receive (TRx) solutions, that support multiple functions using a single, shared set of electronic elements and/or antenna aperture-placing requirements. Achieving the best performance for different circuit blocks demands integration of CMOS with compound semiconductor components for front-end devices such as power amplifiers (PAs) and low noise amplifiers (LNAs). Beamforming arrays (BFAs) are an increasingly large commercial market, allowing for flexibility and efficient use of resources by integrating compact TRx ICs that support wideband operation with high efficiency and sensitivity.

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