SOI Technology:An Opportunity for RF Designers?

Abstract

This last decade silicon-on-insulator (SOI) MOS-FET technology has demonstrated its potentialities for highfrequency (reaching cutoff frequencies close to 500 GHz forn-MOSFETs) and for harsh environments (high temperature,radiation) commercial applications. For RF and system-on-chip applications, SOI also presents the major advantage ofproviding high resistivity substrate capabilities, leading to sub-stantially reduced substrate losses. Substrate resistivity valueshigher than 1 kΩΩΩcm can easily be achieved and high resistivitysilicon (HRS) is commonly foreseen as a promising substratefor radio frequency integrated circuits (RFIC) and mixed sig-nal applications. In this paper, based on several experimentaland simulation results the interest, limitations but also pos-sible future improvements of the SOI MOS technology arepresented