TY - JOUR
T1 - RF Characterization of Diamond Schottky p-i-n Diodes for Receiver Protector Applications
AU - Surdi, Harshad
AU - Ahmad, Mohammad Faizan
AU - Koeck, Franz
AU - Nemanich, Robert J.
AU - Goodnick, Stephen
AU - Thornton, Trevor J.
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received September 4, 2020; revised October 7, 2020; accepted October 9, 2020. Date of publication October 28, 2020; date of current version December 4, 2020. This work was supported in part by the NASA through the HOTTech Program under Grant NNX17AG45G and in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Program NNCI-ECCS-1542160. (Harshad Surdi and Mohammad Faizan Ahmad contributed equally to this work.) (Corresponding author: Trevor J. Thornton.) Harshad Surdi, Mohammad Faizan Ahmad, Stephen Goodnick, and Trevor J. Thornton are with the School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287 USA (e-mail: t.thornton@asu.edu).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2001-2012 IEEE.
PY - 2020/12
Y1 - 2020/12
N2 - Diamond Schottky p-i-n diodes have been grown by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) and incorporated as a shunt element within coplanar striplines for RF characterization. The p-i-n diodes have a thin, lightly doped n-type layer that is fully depleted by the top metal contact, and they operate as high-speed Schottky rectifiers. Measurements from dc to 25 GHz confirm that the diodes can be modeled by a voltage-dependent resistor in parallel with a fixed-value capacitor. In the OFF state with a dc bias of 0 V, the diode insertion loss is less than 0.3 dB at 1 GHz and increases to 14 dB when forward biased to 7.6 V. With a contact resistance, $R_{C}$ , of 0.25 $\text{m}\Omega \cdot $ cm2 and an OFF capacitance, $C_{\mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle OFF}}$ , of 17.5 nF/cm2, the diodes have an RF figure of merit $F_{\mathrm {oc}} =$ ( $2\pi R_{C}\,\,C_{\mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle OFF}})^{-1}$ of 36.5 GHz. The RF model suggests that reducing $R_{C}$ to less than $5\times 10^{-5} \Omega \cdot $ cm2 will enable input power rejection exceeding 30 dB. Compared to conventional silicon or compound semiconductor based power limiters, the superior thermal conductivity of the diamond Schottky p-i-n diodes makes them ideally suitable for RF receiver protectors (RPs) that require high power handing capability.
AB - Diamond Schottky p-i-n diodes have been grown by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) and incorporated as a shunt element within coplanar striplines for RF characterization. The p-i-n diodes have a thin, lightly doped n-type layer that is fully depleted by the top metal contact, and they operate as high-speed Schottky rectifiers. Measurements from dc to 25 GHz confirm that the diodes can be modeled by a voltage-dependent resistor in parallel with a fixed-value capacitor. In the OFF state with a dc bias of 0 V, the diode insertion loss is less than 0.3 dB at 1 GHz and increases to 14 dB when forward biased to 7.6 V. With a contact resistance, $R_{C}$ , of 0.25 $\text{m}\Omega \cdot $ cm2 and an OFF capacitance, $C_{\mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle OFF}}$ , of 17.5 nF/cm2, the diodes have an RF figure of merit $F_{\mathrm {oc}} =$ ( $2\pi R_{C}\,\,C_{\mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle OFF}})^{-1}$ of 36.5 GHz. The RF model suggests that reducing $R_{C}$ to less than $5\times 10^{-5} \Omega \cdot $ cm2 will enable input power rejection exceeding 30 dB. Compared to conventional silicon or compound semiconductor based power limiters, the superior thermal conductivity of the diamond Schottky p-i-n diodes makes them ideally suitable for RF receiver protectors (RPs) that require high power handing capability.
KW - Diamond
KW - SPICE model extraction
KW - Schottky diodes
KW - power semiconductor device
KW - receiver protectors (RPs)
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U2 - 10.1109/LMWC.2020.3031219
DO - 10.1109/LMWC.2020.3031219
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85097745183
SN - 1531-1309
VL - 30
SP - 1141
EP - 1144
JO - IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters
JF - IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters
IS - 12
M1 - 9241775
ER -