Motorola, Inc.'s (NYSE: MOT) Semiconductor Products Sector, today at the IEEE's Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM), disclosed its next- generation 0.18 micron silicon germanium:carbon (SiGe:C) process technology. This fully modular SiGe:C RF BiCMOS technology has transistors with fmax of 110 GHz providing good RF power gain and low noise for 3G wireless and Gigabit optical communication applications.
This technology leverages the heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) module from Motorola's previous 0.35-micron BiCMOS generation and uses Motorola's advanced copper backend. The technology also builds on the company's 0.18-micron low power CMOS logic platform and is engineered to support up to five layers of copper metallization. This is Motorola's second-generation technology to offer 1.6 fF/micron2 MIM capacitors, and thin film resistors with excellent mismatch and very low temperature coefficient. "The rapidly growing communications market space places challenging and conflicting demands upon a mixed-signal technology," said Dr. Vida Ilderem, director of RF/IF silicon technologies in Motorola's DigitalDNA(TM) Laboratories. "Motorola has successfully developed a SiGe:C technology to meet the high performance demands of communication products while offering a very cost-effective solution for portable, consumer applications."
"Our 0.18 micron SiGe:C technology is targeted at the high performance segment of the wireless subscriber and connectivity markets such as 3G, Bluetooth(TM) 2 transceivers, and 5 GHz wireless LANs. These types of applications will require a combination of high performance RF and high density logic in order to bring leadership products to the consumer," said Behrooz Abdi, vice president and general manager of Motorola's Radio Products Division.
"Unlike other 0.18 micron SiGe technologies announced recently, Motorola's SiGe:C features high performance embedded RF passives such as high Q capacitors and copper inductors. Integrating these components is expected not only to enable single chip radios with RF+DSP+Micro, but also to allow a significant reduction in the number of discrete parts that make up the wireless end-product. Our customers can expect to be able to build devices that are simultaneously optimized for cost, size, and current drain, all without compromising performance," said Abdi.
This technology is supported by digital, analog and RF libraries including l/f noise and matching characterization, parasitic extraction and memory compilation to fully enable complex mixed- signal system designs. Low Vt CMOS, isolated NMOS, analog bipolar junction transistors and a comprehensive portfolio of high-quality passive devices are integrated for mixed signal and RF CMOS design capability. In addition, a SiGe:C HBT is integrated for high frequency, low power and low noise RF BiCMOS applications.
Motorola has already introduced several products using its first- generation 0.35 micron SiGe:C process. Among these products is a low noise RF cascode amplifier that is ideal for use in many RF functional blocks such as buffer amplifiers, low noise amplifiers, mixers, IF amplifiers, and voltage controlled oscillators in a wide variety of RF end-products.
Motorola's 0.18 micron HBT BiCMOS process is expected to achieve certification in the first quarter of 2002, at which time new designs will be accepted.
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