High-Gain 500-GHz InP HBT Power Amplifiers

Abstract

We report two terahertz monolithic integrated circuit (TMIC) amplifiers operating at 500 GHz. The 6-stage single-ended power amplifiers use Teledyne's 130 nm indium-phosphide double heterojunction bipolar transistors in a common-base configuration. The impedance matching networks of the first amplifier are designed with shunt lines while the second amplifier uses shunt metal-insulator-metal capacitors. We measured and compared the small-signal and large-signal performance of the two amplifiers around 500 GHz. Although the two TMICs exhibit a similar transducer gain (24 dB) and output power (up to −0.7 dBm), we obtained better yield with the amplifiers designed with shunt lines.