Abstract

This paper reports the (published) status of the AlGaN/GaN technology in the United States. Activities can be divided between AlGaN/GaN on SiC substrates for military applications, sponsored by DoD and AlGaN/GaN on Si for Base Stations. No doubt that early emphasis for US DoD has been “performances” (the W/mm race!) and progress has been fast, probably culminating with UCSB and Cree demonstrating 32W/mm at 4 GHz. These excellent performances have been made possible by the introduction and refinement of the “Field- Plate”. Understandably, the emphasis is now reliability, and all the challenges have not been conquered. In the commercial world, Nitronex has been pionneering AlGaN/GaN on Si, manufacturing large gate width devices using MOCVD grown 4” Si substrates; 20W at –39dBc is achieved with 11.5dB gain and 25% pae (28V bias) over 1.8-2.2GHz. Excellent reliability is extracted with over 20 years MTTF. TriQuint has demonstrated the potential of GaN on Si for higher frequencies with 7W/mm with 38% pae and 9dB gain at 10GHz.