GaAs microwave power FET

A design consideration for an X-band GaAs power FET, features of the fabrication process, and electrical characteristics of the FET are described. Interdigitated 53 source and 52 drain electrodes and an overlaid gate electrode for connecting 104 Schottky gates in parallel have been introduced to achieve a 1.5-µm-long and 5200-µm-wide gate FET. A sheet grounding technique has been developed in order to minimize the common source lead inductance (L
8
= 50 pH). The resulting devices can produce 0.7-W and 1.6-W saturation output power at 10 GHz and 8 GHz, respectively. At 6 GHz, a linear gain of 7 dB, an output power of 0.85 W at 1-dB gain compression and 30-percent power added efficiency can be achieved. The intercept point for third-order intermodulation products is 37.5 dBm at 6.2 GHz.