Nitres Reports 14 W GaN-based HEMT Amplifier
Westlake Village, CA. Nitres, Inc. has achieved record power from a GaN-based power HEMT amplifier. The broadband 6-10 GHz amplifier gave 14.1 W output power at 8 GHz. The circuit was fabricated on a aluminum nitride substrate with a 4-mm-wide AlGaN/GaN HEMT flip-chip bonded on it. The die size of each integrated circuit is 7x5 mm squared. The HEMTs are made from AlGaN/GaN epitaxial layers grown on SiC substrates. The associated gain and power added efficiency were 4.5 dB and 25%. The peak small signal gain was 9 dB as shown in the graph. "This is a significant advancement in our HEMT technology and gives Nitres a leadership position," said Bernd Keller, Vice President of Engineering.
This performance was enabled by Nitres high power density GaN-based HEMTs. These devices have a gate length of 0.5 micron and exhibit outstanding current-gain and power-gain cutoff frequencies of 30 and 100 GHz respectively. They also show a high current density of 1.2 A/mm and can be operated at a high bias of 35-40 V. Power densities of 9.1~9.4 W/mm were obtained at 6-10 GHz from 100-150 micron wide devices. This power density level is the highest for any field-effect-transistor (FET) and is 9-times greater than the conventional GaAs and Si based FETs.
Measurements on 2-mm-wide transistors showed output power of 9.2-9.8 W with power-added-efficiency of 44-48% at 8 GHz, which represents the highest output power from any FET of the same size.
For more information, please contact: Diane Harbert Telephone: (818) 879-0686 Fax: 818) 879-0687 Email: diane@nitres.com
Diane Harbert Telephone: (818) 879-0686 Fax: 818) 879-0687 Email: diane@nitres.com
