Integrated subharmonic planar Schottky diode mixers for submillimetre wave applications

• Main Author: Rollin, Jean Marc
• Other Authors: Davies, Steven
• Published: University of Bath 2006
• Subjects: 621.3815
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.440364

The growing demand for submillimetre wave (SMW ) circuits is spurred not only by the needs of traditional science applications such as radio astronomy and atmospheric remote sensing but also by military and commercial applications such as compact range radar. Several approaches to device and circuit fabrication have been developed and in the past 20 years, many successful SM W components have been built for operation up to THz frequencies. However, they all suffer one or more drawback, such as low reliability and repeatability, lengthy and difficult assembly and reliance on mechanical tuners. The first part of the work described here has been the development of high yield, high quality and high repeatability antiparallel Schottky diodes entirely fabricated at the University of Bath. After producing Schottky diodes having state of the art characteristics, the main focus of the research was the development of a process to monolithically integrate the anti-parallel Schottky diode in a 200 GHz RF mixer circuit. Throughout this research, advantage has been taken of the recent development of advanced computer aided design tools that are suitable for simulating both linear and nonlinear parts of the submillimetre mixer to design and fabricated a fixed-tuned integrated mixer at 183 GHz.