Applications of SOI Technologies to Communication

This paper presents an overview of emerging SOI technologies and their application to communication ICs. The unique properties of Si and SiO2, coupled with the broad range of achievable SiO2 film thicknesses, allow tuning of existing devices and the design of new devices targeting RF, high-speed wire line, and photonic communication applications. By using high-resistivity Si substrates, it becomes possible to realize inductors with Q as high as 50 as well as high-power RF switches. Record SOI NFET fT of 485GHz and fMAX of 430GHz have been measured, enabling the design of a broad range of high performance circuits, including 100GHz CML dividers, >100 GHz LC-VCOs, and 16Gb/s 8-port core back-plane transceivers. Finally, due to the large difference in refractive index between Si and SiO2, SOI technology allows the efficient design of photonic devices and circuits.

[1]  Jean-Olivier Plouchart,et al.  An array of 4 complementary LC-VCOs with 51.4% W-Band coverage in 32nm SOI CMOS , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference - Digest of Technical Papers.

[2]  Dow-Chih Niu,et al.  Millimeter-wave MMIC single-pole-double-throw passive HEMT switches using impedance-transformation networks , 2003 .

[3]  Suhwan Kim,et al.  Application of an SOI 0.12-µm CMOS technology to SoCs with low-power and high-frequency circuits , 2003, IBM J. Res. Dev..

[4]  Junjun Li,et al.  Fully depleted extremely thin SOI for mainstream 20nm low-power technology and beyond , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference - (ISSCC).

[5]  Jean-Olivier Plouchart,et al.  Performance Variability of a 90GHz Static CML Frequency Divider in 65nm SOI CMOS , 2007, 2007 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. Digest of Technical Papers.

[6]  Mounir Meghelli,et al.  A 16-Gb/s backplane transceiver with 12-tap current integrating DFE and dynamic adaptation of voltage offset and timing drifts in 45-nm SOI CMOS technology , 2011, 2011 IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC).

[7]  Alvin J. Joseph,et al.  A Thin-Film SOI 180nm CMOS RF Switch Technology , 2009 .

[8]  Alexander V. Rylyakov,et al.  A 3.9ns 8.9mW 4×4 silicon photonic switch hybrid integrated with CMOS driver , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference.

[9]  G. G. Shahidi,et al.  SOI technology for the GHz era , 2001, 2001 International Symposium on VLSI Technology, Systems, and Applications. Proceedings of Technical Papers (Cat. No.01TH8517).

[10]  B. Jagannathan,et al.  Record RF performance of 45-nm SOI CMOS Technology , 2007, 2007 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting.

[11]  Alvin Joseph,et al.  High performance SOI RF switches for wireless applications , 2010, 2010 10th IEEE International Conference on Solid-State and Integrated Circuit Technology.

[12]  Yue Tan,et al.  A power-optimized widely-tunable 5-GHz monolithic VCO in a digital SOI CMOS technology on high resistivity substrate , 2003, ISLPED '03.