• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.10-15
• /
• 2015

A thin-film transmission line (TFTL) employing a microstrip line/coplanar waveguide (ML/CPW) was fabricated on a silicon substrate for application to a miniaturized on-chip RF component, and the RF characteristics of the device with the proposed structure were investigated. The TFTL employing a ML/CPW composite structure exhibited a shorter wavelength than that of a conventional coplanar waveguide and that of a thin-film microstrip line. When the TFTL with the proposed structure was fabricated to have a length of ${\lambda}/8$, it showed a loss of less than 1.12 dB at up to 30 GHz. The improvement in the periodic capacitance of the TFTL caused for the propagation constant, ${\beta}$, and the effective permittivity, ${\varepsilon}_{eff}$, to have values higher than those of a device with only a conventional coplanar waveguide and a thin film microstrip line. The TFTL with the proposed structure showed a ${\beta}$ of 0.53~2.96 rad/mm and an ${\varepsilon}_{eff}$ of 22.3~25.3 when operating from 5 to 30 GHz. A highly miniaturized impedance transformer was fabricated on a silicon substrate using the proposed TFTL for application to a low-impedance transformation for broadband. The size of the impedance transformer was 0.01 mm2, which is only 1.04% of the size of a transformer fabricated using a conventional coplanar waveguide on a silicon substrate. The impedance transformer showed excellent RF performance for broadband.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.39 no.1
• /
• pp.45-51
• /
• 2015

In this paper, we study the RF characteristics of the short wavelength thin-film transmission line employing microstrip line (ML)/coplanar waveguide (CPW) composite structure on silicon substrate for application to RFIC (radio frequency integrated circuit). The thin-film transmission line employing ML/CPW composite structure showed a wavelength shorter than conventional transmission lines. Concretely, at 10 GHz, the wavelength of the transmission line employing ML/CPW composite structure was 6.26 mm, which was 60.5 % of the conventional coplanar waveguide. We also extracted the bandwidth characteristic of the transmission line employing ML/CPW composite structure using equivalent circuit analysis. The S parameter of the equivalent circuit showed a good agreement with measured result. According to the bandwidth extraction result, the cut-off frequency of thin-film transmission line employing ML/CPW composite structure was 377 GHz. Above results indicate that the transmission line employing ML/CPW composite structure can be effectively used for application to broadband and compact RFIC.