A novel fabrication technology for lateral scale-down of sub-100-nm-gate InP-based HEMTs is presented. The fabricated device, whose structure features a reduced distance between the gate and ohmic metals of less than 100 nm, exhibits low ohmic resistances and improved DC and RF characteristics with good uniformity across a wafer. A fabricated 130-nm-gate lattice-matched InAlAs/InGaAs HEMT exhibits an extrinsic transconductance of 1.3 S/mm. This is 25% increase compared to that of a HEMT fabricated with our conventional process, which is explained by the reduction of RS. The average current-gain-cutoff-frequency (fT) of 261 GHz was obtained with a small deviation of 9.0 GHz. Uniform characteristics with high yield were also confirmed for HEMTs with shorter gates. The average fT of 290 GHz with a standard deviation of 9.3 GHz was obtained for 55-nm-gate HEMTs. The developed fabrication technology is promising for improving the electrical characteristics of sub-100-nm-gate InP-based HEMTs and for their integration.

We have proposed a waveguide to microstrip line transition, which perpendicularly connects one waveguide into two microstrip lines. It consists of only a waveguide and a dielectric substrate with copper foils. A backshort waveguide for typical transitions is not needed. Additionally, the transition does not require via holes on the substrate. These innovations simplify the structure and the manufacturing process. We assume that our transition and antennas are co-located on the substrate. We reduced the undesirable radiation from the transition so as not to contaminate the desirable radiation pattern. In this paper, we address output phase of our transition. Since the transition has two MSL output ports connecting to different radiation elements, the phase error between two dividing signals leads to beam shift in the radiation pattern. Unfortunately, misalignment of etching pattern between copper layers of the substrate is unavoidable. The structural asymmetry causes the phase error. In order to tolerate the misalignment, we propose to add a pair of open stubs to the transition. We show that the structure drastically stabilizes the output phase. Though the stubs create some extra radiation, we confirm that the impact is not significant. Moreover, we fabricate and measure a prototype antenna that uses the transition. In the case of with stubs, the radiation pattern is unchanged even if the misalignment is severe.

To improve throughput of Electron Beam Direct Writing (EBDW) with Character Projection (CP) method, a structured routing architecture (SRA) has been proposed to restrict VIA placement and wire-track transition. It reduces possible layout patterns in the interconnect layers, and increases VIA and metal figure numbers in the EB shots while suppressing the CP character number explosion. In this paper, we discuss details of the SRA design methodology, and demonstrate the CP performance by SRA in comparison with other EBDW techniques. Our experimental results show viable CP performance for practical use, and prove SRA's feasibility in 14nm mass fabrication.

This study aims to propose a novel traveling-wave series-fed microstrip array antenna and its design. The proposed antenna has two features: additional slits placed on the output side of the antenna element are introduced as a new degree of freedom to control the radiation power from each element. Also, the unequal element spacing is applied to compensate passing phases of each antenna element; meander lines that would increase the insertion loss are not used. A 9-element linear array is designed and tested, and the simulated and measured results agree, thus validating the proposed design.

Character projection (CP) is a high-speed mask-less exposure technique for electron-beam direct writing (EBDW). In CP exposure of VIA layers, higher throughput is realized if more VIAs are exposed in each EB shot, but it will result in huge number of VIA characters to cover arbitrary VIA arrangements. We adopt one-dimensional VIA arrays as the basic CP character architecture to increase VIA numbers in an EB shot while saving the stencil area by superposed character arrangement. In addition, CP throughput is further improved by layout constraints on the VIA placement in the detail routing phase. Our experimental results proved the feasibility of our exposure strategy in the practical CP use in 14nm lithography.

We propose waveguide to microstrip line transitions for automotive millimeter wave radar modules. The transitions perpendicularly connect one waveguide and one or two microstrip lines. The configuration is simple because it consists of a waveguide and a dielectric substrate with copper foils. Additionally the transitions do not need via holes on the substrate. It leads to lower costs and improved reliability. We have already proposed a via-less transition by using multi-stage impedance transformers. The impedance transformers are used for suppressing undesirable radiation from the transition as well as impedance matching. In this paper, we propose a new transition with the microstrip lines on the long axis of the waveguide while most transitions place the microstrip lines on the minor axis (electric field direction) of the waveguide. Though our transition uses bend structures of microstrip lines, which basically cause radiation, our optimized configuration can keep small radiation. We also design a transition with a single microstrip line. The proposed transition with 2 microstrip lines can be modified to the 1 microstrip line version with minimum radiation loss. Electromagnetic simulations confirm the small radiation levels expected. Additionally we fabricate the transitions with back to back structure and determine the transmission and radiation performance. We also fabricates the transition for a patch array antenna. We confirm that the undesirable radiation from the proposed transition is small and the radiation pattern of the array antenna is not worsen by the transition.

We propose a new configuration for phased array antennas. The proposal uses radiation pattern reconfigurable antennas as the antenna element to improve the gain on the scanning angle and to suppress the grating lobes of sparse phased array antennas. This configuration can reduce the element number because the desired gain of the total array can be achieved by using fewer elements. We demonstrate the concept by designing a radiation pattern reconfigurable Yagi-Uda antenna. PIN diode switches are added to the parasitic elements to change director and reflector. The switches of multiple array elements are concurrently controlled by just a single one-pair line. This control structure is simple and can be applied to large-scale arrays. The proposed antenna yields an element gain that almost matches the theoretical limit across about half the coverage, even if the element spacing is enlarged to 1λ. If the switch states are interchanged, the gain in the mirror direction can be increased. We design a 48-element array and compare its gain against those of normal dipole antennas. We also fabricate the proposed antenna and demonstrate radiation pattern switching.

We propose a data transmission method for resonant wireless power transmission systems. In order to transmit data, we use the coils originally designed for power transmission, no additional antennas are required. We focus on uplink data transmission and adopt the load modulation technique. This configuration yields mid-range data transmission without transmitting power. In addition, the proposal enables simultaneous power feeding and uplink data transmission. We make a prototype demonstrating resonant wireless power transmission and measure its S-parameter under some load conditions. The results confirm the potential of load modulation in supporting uplink data transmission. Additionally, the results are elucidated by analyzing an equivalent circuit. Measured S-parameter and equivalent circuit response are found to be similar.