Gallium arsenide integrated circuits for professional broadband applications up to 3 GHz approximately

A GaAs-FET-technology for the manufacture of fast GaAs broadband IC's was developed with: local ion implantation for the channel and the contact region; Si3N4 cap for annealing and in process surface protection; gold based metallizations in a modified lift-off technique; and a second Si3N4 layer on top of the metallizations for safe enclosure of the active areas and as dielectric for metal insulator metal coupling capacitors. The gains with this technology approximate those of the silicon planar technology. An antenna amplifier with 20 dB gain from 40 to 1000 MHz and a noise figure of about 4 dB was tested in different modifications with integrated load transistors and with external load inductors. The stages are cascadable without matching, so higher gains are possible. An amplifier for measurement equipment with 2 GHz bandwidth and 16 dB gain was constructed with selected antenna amplifier samples using real load resistors. Monolithic integrated differential amplifier stages show gain factors of up to 35 dB with 22 MHz 3 dB-bandwidth suitable for a 2 stage operational amplifier with dB gain and 14 MHz bandwidth.