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Diamond RF Diodes Towards High Power Applications

MetadataDetails
Publication Date2023-10-29
AuthorsJose Andres Orozco, J.M. Brown, Anna Zaniewski, Manpuneet Benipal, R. J. Nemanich
InstitutionsDiamond Materials (United States), Arizona State University

Favorable material properties such as extreme thermal conductivity, high input power attenuation, low on resistance and high reliability make diamond among the most promising materials for high power RF applications such as limiter/receiver protector systems. RF diodes are the core component in receiver protector systems. To meet the needs of this application, we demonstrate successful diamond-based RF diode fabrication, starting with plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition growth of p-i-n layers on <100> diamond substrates, microfabrication, and RF characterization. Diode characterization is conducted from dc to 25 GHz with results closely matching RF diode structures fabricated on <111> diamond substrates. Compared to previous <111> devices, we show off-capacitance and small signal resistance values as low as 16.1•10 <sup xmlns:mml=ā€œhttp://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathMLā€ xmlns:xlink=ā€œhttp://www.w3.org/1999/xlinkā€&gt;-9&lt;/sup> F/cm <sup xmlns:mml=ā€œhttp://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathMLā€ xmlns:xlink=ā€œhttp://www.w3.org/1999/xlinkā€&gt;2&lt;/sup> and 0.65•10 <sup xmlns:mml=ā€œhttp://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathMLā€ xmlns:xlink=ā€œhttp://www.w3.org/1999/xlinkā€&gt;-3&lt;/sup> Ohm•cm <sup xmlns:mml=ā€œhttp://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathMLā€ xmlns:xlink=ā€œhttp://www.w3.org/1999/xlinkā€&gt;2&lt;/sup> as well as additional pathways for further reducing these values and enabling receiver protector circuits with higher power handling requirements.