Characterization and Performance Evaluation of PIN Diodes and Scope of Flexible Polymer Composites for Wearable Electronics

Abstract

Different semiconductor materials have been used for the fabrication of PIN diodes such as Si, Ge, GaAs, SiC-3C, SiC-4H, and InAs. These different semiconductor materials show different characteristics and advantages such as SiC-4H is ultrafast switch. But, when flexible polymers composites like Si-nanomembranes, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and biodegradable polymer composite like carbon nanotubes (CNT) are used for fabrication, the device has the capability to switch from rigid electronic devices to flexible and wearable electronic devices. These polymer composites’ outstanding characteristics like conductivity, charge selectivity, flexibility, and lightweight make them eligible for their selection in fabrication process for wearable electronics devices. In this article, the performance of PIN diodes (BAR64-02) as an RF switch is investigated from 1 to 10 GHz. PIN diodes can control large amounts of RF power at very low DC voltage, implying their suitability for RF applications. In this paper, the benefit of using plastic polymer composites for the fabrication of PIN diodes, capacitors, and antennas is thoroughly described. Along with this, individual characterization, fabrication, and testing of all biasing components are also done to analyze the individual effect of each biasing component on the performance of PIN diodes. The complete biasing circuitry for the PIN diode is modeled in the HFSS software. When a PIN diode is inserted in between 50 Ω microstrip line, it introduces 1 dB insertion loss and 20 dB isolation loss from 1 to 7 GHz. Finally, a PIN diode is integrated in a reconfigurable antenna to study the actual effect. The transmission loss in the RF signal is nearly 1 dB from 1 to 7 GHz in the presence of biasing components.