SOI Technologies for RF and Millimeter-Wave Applications

This chapter presents an overview of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology for radio-frequency (RF) and millimeter-wave telecommunication applications. The SOI technology took the RF world by storm in the past decade. The partially depleted (PD) 45 nm RF-SOI process from GlobalFoundries has demonstrated its strong potential for RF and millimeter-wave circuits. The high-volume production capabilities offered by the silicon industry have motivated the development of RF PD-SOI and fully depleted-SOI nodes, which are demonstrating their potential for all kinds of RF and millimeter-wave functional blocks toward full SOI finite element method (FEM) integration. The increased complexity and technological trends of FEMs are discussed. Finally, a review is performed to reveal the position of SOI for key RF and millimeter-wave circuits. The PD-SOI transistor is then a four-terminal device. The trap rich-SOI wafer technology was developed to tackle this particular parasitic surface conduction problem and has been widely adopted for high-quality RF-SOI applications.