Abstract:

The critical issues impacting the reliability and manufacturing of GaAs monolithic microwave integrated circuits and optical interconnects are reviewed.  The manufacturing problems encompass those of material quality, processing, and circuit design.  In reality, these problems are closely related.  Good substrates are a necessity for a reproducible process.  The success of a particular circuit design approach is very much dependent on the limitations imposed by materials, processing capability and chip architecture.  The manufacturing technology for fabricating GaAs monolithic microwave integrated circuits has improved over the past two years.  The refinements now being made are directed primarily at enhancement of yield, realization of performance, and increase in circuit complexity. The purpose of this review paper is to (1) address the issues affecting the reliability and the manufacture of GaAs MMICs and (2) present the industrial status (through an industrial database) in addressing such issues as yield, throughput, design rules, chip architecture, reliability, design for yield and manufacturability, substrate qualification, choice of process related models and sensitivity analysis.  The analysis and discussion of reliability problems for optical interconnects is also presented.
 

Complete article is available to CALCE Consortium Members.