A broadband active microwave monolithically integrated circuit balun in graphene technology

Dalal Fadil (1) , Vikram Passi (1) , Wei Wei (2) , Soukaina Ben Salk (1) , Di Zhou (1) , Wlodek Strupinski (3) , Max C Lemme (4) , Thomas Zimmer (5) , Emiliano Pallecchi (1, 6) , Henri Happy (1, 6) , Sebastien Fregonese (5)

1 IEMN - Institut d’Électronique, de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie - UMR 8520
2 School of Computer and Electronic Information [Guangxi University]
3 Warsaw University of Technology [Warsaw]
4 RWTH - Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen University
5 IMS - Laboratoire de l'intégration, du matériau au système
6 CARBON - IEMN - Carbon - IEMN

This paper presents the first graphene radiofrequency (RF) monolithic integrated balun circuit. It is composed of four integrated graphene field effect transistors (GFETs). This innovative active balun concept takes advantage of the GFET ambipolar behavior. It is realized using an advanced silicon carbide (SiC) based bilayer graphene FET technology having RF performances of about 20 GHz. Balun circuit measurement demonstrates its high frequency capability. An upper limit of 6 GHz has been achieved when considering a phase difference lower than 10° and a magnitude of amplitude imbalance less than 0.5 dB. Hence, this circuit topology shows excellent performance with large broadband performance and a functionality of up to one-third of the transit frequency of the transistor.

Mots clés: graphene; microwave; MMIC; integrated circuits; active balun; 2D materials

Domaines: Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique

Dalal Fadil, Vikram Passi, Wei Wei, Soukaina Ben Salk, Di Zhou, et al.. A broadband active microwave monolithically integrated circuit balun in graphene technology. Applied Sciences, 2020, 10 (6), pp.2183. ⟨10.3390/app10062183⟩. ⟨hal-02884085⟩