A 185–215-GHz Subharmonic Resistive Graphene FET Integrated Mixer on Silicon

Abstract

A 200-GHz integrated resistive subharmonic mixer based on a single chemical vapor deposition graphene field-effect transistor (G-FET) is demonstrated experimentally. This device has a gate length of 0.5 μm and a gate width of 2 × 40 μm. The G-FET channel is patterned into an array of bow-tie-shaped nanoconstrictions, resulting in the device impedance levels of ∼50 and the ON-OFF ratios of ≥4. The integrated mixer circuit is implemented in coplanar waveguide technology and realized on a 100-μm-thick highly resistive silicon substrate. The mixer conversion loss is measured to be 29 ± 2 dB across the 185-210-GHz band with 12.5-11.5 dBm of local oscillator (LO) pump power and >15-dB LO-RF isolation. The estimated 3-dB IF bandwidth is 15 GHz.

An Integrated 200-GHz Graphene FET Based Receiver

“…The equivalent circuit simulations are used to simulate and optimize the dc and rf performances of the GFETs, the full-wave EM simulations are performed to simulate and optimise the coplanar waveguide circuitry, the planar spiral inductor, as well as a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor, and the harmonic balance simulations are carried out to simulate the full receiver performance. The mixer layout is as that reported in [7]. The mixer GFET channel is designed as an array of bow-tie-shaped nano-constrictions with the aim to increase the on-off ratio, hence, the mixer gain, and to provide impedance matching.…”

“…The simplification of the circuitry and the potential of graphene being grown in large scale and being transferred to any arbitrary substrate, explains the interest of developing a receiver circuit fully based on GFETs. In our recent works a 10-dB small-signal amplifier designed for 1 GHz and a 200 GHz subharmonic resistive mixer based on graphene FETs (GFETs) have been demonstrated [6,7]. In this work the GFET-mixer and IF amplifier are integrated together on a silicon substrate chip, as shown in Fig.…”

Asymmetric Two-Terminal Graphene Detector for Broadband Radiofrequency Heterodyne- and Self-Mixing

“…9 The graphene field effect transistor ("GFET") configuration dominated the gradual development of graphene mixers through the GHz to hundreds of GHz frequency range. 5,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] At low frequencies, GFET mixers and multipliers still cannot compete with the dominant CMOS and other semiconductor technologies.…”

“…Note that the GFET microwave and millimeter-wave mixers studied so far have consistently smaller bandwidth than what the intrinsic graphene speed has to offer. 5,12,14,16 In contrast, applications in high-speed (i.e. wide-bandwidth) data communications utilizing fiber and waveguide based optical systems, which take advantage of the ability of graphene to absorb and detect a very wide range of infrared photons at speeds higher than 60 GHz, have advanced more rapidly.…”

A heterodyne graphene FET detector at 400 GHz

“…The GFET subharmonic mixers were tested at 30 GHz [7], and at 200 GHz [8] as integrated circuits. The fundamental FET mixers were demonstrated in quasi-optical setups based on CMOS FETs [9], and on bi-layer GFETs [10] with the reported IF bandwidth of 1 GHz.…”