Design of a Ku-band Wilkinson power divider on surface-stabilized high-resistivity Si substrates

Abstract

The design, fabrication, and experimental evaluation of a Ku-Band 3-dB Wilkinson power divider on high-resistivity silicon (HRS) are presented in this paper. The measured insertion for the powder divider is 3.5 dB and the isolation between ports 2 and 3 is 12 dB. CPW lines were fabricated on two different silicon substrates (HRS and CMOS-grade silicon) and it is shown that the loss characteristics for a 50Ω CPW patterned on the surface-stabilized HRS is only 0.16 dB at 15 GHz. In contrast, the insertion loss for CPW line on CMOS grade silicon is 8.3 dB at 15 GHz. Thus, low insertion loss can be achieved by stabilizing the surface of HRS with a thin polysilicon layer. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 44: 436–439, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.20659