WIN Semiconductors, the world’s largest pure-play compound semiconductor foundry, has announced the beta release of its moisture-rugged 0.1µm pHEMT process. The PP10-29 technology builds on the mature and production-proven PP10 platform, this high-performance technology incorporates WIN’s second-generation humidity resistance process, EMRII, to provide mechanical protection and moisture ruggedness at the wafer level. WIN Semiconductors was talking about its compound semiconductor RF and mm-Wave solutions in booth #531 at the 2024 International Microwave Symposium being held in Washington, DC, this week.
To minimize added parasitic capacitance, the EMRII layers form localized air-cavities over all transistors to provide moisture resistance with minimal impact to gain, noise figure and output power. This key feature of PP10-29 mitigates amplifier performance changes from packaging, plastic encapsulation or PCB embedding, and accelerates new product development.
The core of PP10-29 is a versatile 0.1µm-gate D-mode with ƒt/ƒmax of 145 GHz and 180 GHz respectively and is qualified for 4 V operation. Manufactured on 150 mm GaAs substrates, this platform offers two interconnect metal layers, air-bridge crossovers, precision TaN resistors, monolithic PN-junction diodes for compact on-chip ESD protection circuits and through wafer vias for low inductance grounding. Providing a path to new packaging and assembly options, PP10-29 supports multiple DC and RF I/O configurations including standard wire-bonding, frontside Cu-bumps/RDL, and through-chip RF and DC transitions.
The PP10-29 has reached beta release and is available for early access MPW runs. Qualifications testing is complete and final modeling/PDK generation is expected to conclude in August 2024 with full production release scheduled for late Q3 ’24. Contact a WIN Semiconductors regional sales manager for information about sample kits and the timing of MPW runs.
Click here to view everything RF's coverage of IMS 2024.
