ABSTRACT: In the design of high-speed and high frequency IC’s,the influence of the substrate on the circuit performance must beconsidered carefully. This work investigates the loss characteristic ofsilicon substrate with different resistivities and distinguishes theoreti-cally and experimentally the dielectric losses into the intrinsic loss ofsilicon (tan D ) and the extrinsic substrate leakage loss (tan L )caused by the finite conductivity of the substrate. The dielectric re-laxation (cut off) frequency as a function of silicon substrate resistiv-ity are calculated as considering the conditions of substrate noiseisolation and RF passive device design. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Microwave Opt Technol Lett 48: 1773–1776, 2006; Published online inWiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.21786 Key words: conductivity; dielectric loss; intrinsic loss; extrinsic loss;tan L 1. INTRODUCTION There is a steady increase in the demand for high-density, low-cost, compact RF front ends, and microwave monolithic integratedcircuits (MMICs) [1] for wireless and portable communication.The integration of a large number of passive components includingthe individual passive devices of transmission lines, inductors,capacitors, or functional passive devices of filters and antennaswith low loss and minimal crosstalk is as important as the ad-vancement in active transistor technology [2]. However, the low-resistivity substrate used in standard CMOS processing for mostMMICs has limited the integration of high-quality passive com-ponents. There has been a large amount of research, both inindustry and in academia, to overcome the high attenuation of thepassive components on lossy silicon substrate to develop high-quality microwave circuits and modules [2–5]. High resistivitysilicon (HRS) has been proven as a solution for reducing thesubstrate leakage loss and suppressing substrate noise of the pas-sives, and HRS substrates can be realized by MeV proton implan-
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