IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

12, 2013

409

Silicon Carbide (SiC) Antennas for High-Temperature and High-Power Applications

Tutku Karacolak, Member, IEEE, Rooban Venkatesh K. G. Thirumalai, Member, IEEE, J. Neil Merrett, Yaroslav Koshka, and Erdem Topsakal, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractThe main objective of this letter is to evaluate semi-insulating silicon carbide (SiC) material as a candidate for dielectric substrate for patch antennas, with a long-term potential for monolithic antenna integration on a SiC semiconductor chip, operation in extreme environments, and other applications. First, computeraided design of microstrip patch antennas operating at 10 GHz was conducted. The antenna designs were implemented using semi-insulating SiC substrates and gold ground planes and patches. A good agreement between the experimental results and simulation was obtained at the band of operation. Return loss and radiation patterns were investigated. As future work, a possibility of utilizing highly conductive (heavily doped) SiC epitaxial layers as the ground planes and radiating patches were investigated using computer simulations. Index TermsHigh-temperature and high-power applications, microstrip patch antenna, silicon carbide (SiC).

TABLE I ELECTRICAL PROPERTIES OF SEMI-INSULATING SiC SUBSTRATE

I. INTRODUCTION ILICON carbide (SiC) materials have attracted great interest recently for high-temperature and high-power electronics as well as for biomedical, gas-sensing, and other applications in harsh environments due to its wide energy band-gap, high thermal conductivity, excellent physical stability, and maximum operating temperature [1], [2]. High breakdown electric eld of SiC offers important advantages for high-voltage and high-power diodes and transistors. High saturated drift velocity enables high-frequency operation in the RF and microwave range. In more traditional semiconductor technologies (e.g., Si and GaAs), RF and monolithic microwave (MM) integrated circuits are well known for their applications in transmit/receive modules. In recent years, there has been a great deal of research undertaken to extend the level of integration to include the antenna subsystem. The need

in antenna integration is dictated by applications in mobile communications, automotive sensors, and nongeostationary satellites. Monolithic integration of a SiC power transistor and control circuitry in a single module (so-called Smart Power integration) offers huge improvements in efciency and reliability of the power-electronic systems, which justies aggressive efforts in this direction [3]. However, virtually no efforts have been demonstrated in developing SiC RF ICs. Moreover, no efforts to utilize SiC as the dielectric substrate (which is the required rst step toward including the antenna into the monolithically integrated system) have been reported. Printed microstrip patch antennas are low-prole and low-weight and can easily be integrated on the same SiC chip with SiC circuitry. These antennas can also be miniaturized for wideband or multiband operations. The dielectric properties of semi-insulating SiC substrates allow for antenna miniaturization and higher antenna efciency due to its high dielectric constant , low loss tangent , and low conductivity S/m values. Table I shows electrical properties of semi-insulating SiC. In this letter, our aim is to explore the microstrip patch antenna fabrication technology utilizing semi-insulating SiC materials, which would be the rst step for antenna integration on a SiC wafer. II. ANTENNA DESIGN Two sample microstrip patch antennas were designed for operation at 10 GHz to test the proposed idea. We have chosen 10 GHz for the operation frequency to design a small-size low-prole antenna that would be easier to integrate on a SiC chip. The antenna dimensions were determined using particle swarm optimization with an objective function satisfying return-loss value less than 10 dB. The geometry and the dimensions of the optimized antennas are given in Fig. 1 and Table II. Simulations were conducted using ANSYS HFSS software combined with MATLAB. During the simulations, the dielectric constant and conductivity for the SiC substrate were taken as 10 and 10 S/m, respectively. These values are

Manuscript received December 28, 2012; accepted February 06, 2013. Date of publication March 06, 2013; date of current version April 04, 2013. T. Karacolak was with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS 39759 USA. He is now with the School of Engineering and Computer Science, Washington State University, Vancouver, WA 98696 USA. R. V. K. G. Thirumalai and Y. Koshka are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS 39759 USA. J. N. Merrett is with the Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH 45433 USA. E. Topsakal is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mississippi State University, University, MS 39762 USA (e-mail: topsakal@ece.msstate.edu). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this letter are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/LAWP.2013.2251599

1536-1225/$31.00 2013 IEEE

410

IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 12, 2013

Fig. 1. Geometry of the sample patch antennas utilizing SiC as the dielectric substrate.

TABLE II DIMENSIONS OF THE SAMPLE PATCH ANTENNAS

measured using Agilents dielectric probe kit in our laboratory. The thickness of the substrate was taken equal to the typical thickness of commercial 4H-SiC wafers of 0.3673 mm. Note that the patch and the ground plane were assigned as perfect electric conductors (PECs) for these initial simulations. The simulated return loss of the antennas is shown in Fig. 2. As seen, both antennas resonate around 10 GHz. The band is narrow due to the thickness of the available substrate [4]. III. FABRICATION PROCESS Vanadium-doped semi-insulating SiC substrates were used as the dielectric substrate for the antenna. Blanket metal deposition was conducted on the front and back of the SiC substrate. The metal stack consisted of 1 k Ti for adhesion, 1 k Pt for a metal diffusion barrier and an oxygen barrier, and 3 m Au for a low-resistance wire-bondable layer, as shown in Fig. 3. The fabrication steps for patterning front and backside metal layers are as follows. 1) The metal layer was e-beam deposited over the front and backside of the sample. 2) The antenna pattern was patterned with photoresist (PR) on the front side, and the entire backside was coated with PR. 3) The gold layer was etched with 3 HCl: 1 HNO : 2 H O at 30 . 4) The platinum layer was etched with an Ar plasma. 5) The Ti layer was etched with 20 H O: 1 HF: 1 H O at room temperature. The photoresist was stripped in acetone.

Fig. 2. Simulated return loss (dB) with respect to frequency (GHz) of the designed antennas. (a) Antenna 1 (b) Antenna 2.

Fig. 3. Schematic representation of the cross section of the SiC antenna. The drawing shows (not in scale) the semi-insulating SiC substrate used as the dielectric medium and metal layers on the top and the back.

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The fabricated SiC antennas are shown in Fig. 4. Simulations including the entire SiC substrate and all three antennas on the same substrate conrmed that the coupling is negligible, which is why the three antennas in Fig. 4 have not been separated and have been measured while remaining on the same substrate. Return-loss measurements were performed using an

KARACOLAK et al.: SiC ANTENNAS FOR HIGH-TEMPERATURE AND HIGH-POWER APPLICATIONS

411

Fig. 6. Comparison of measured and simulated return loss (dB) of the second antenna with respect to frequency (GHz). Fig. 4. Fabricated SiC microstrip patch antennas.

Fig. 7. Co- and cross-polarized radiated elds of the second antenna at 10 GHz for (a) and (b) .

Fig. 5. Comparison of measured and simulated return loss (dB) of the rst antenna with respect to frequency (GHz).

E8362B PNA network analyzer. The measured and simulated return-loss responses of both antennas are shown in Figs. 5 and 6, respectively. Since the antennas consist of gold ground planes and patches, simulations were carried out by assigning gold S/m instead of perfectly conducting material for a more realistic and reasonable comparison. A good agreement is seen for both antennas at the band of operation (10 GHz), conrming that sufcient antenna functionality can be achieved when using SiC as the dielectric substrate. The differences between simulations and the experiment could be explained by the fabrication imperfections. Specically, the imperfect connection of the SMA connector with the feeding line should affect the measured value. Even small fabrication imperfections of this kind at 10 GHz will result in discrepancy between simulations and measurements. In addition, due to losses in SiC, the entire curve shifts down, manifesting itself as an improved bandwidth. Fig. 7(a) and (b) shows the simulated co- and cross-polarized radiated elds of the second antenna for and

cuts at 10 GHz. It is apparent from the plots that the antenna shows omnidirectional radiation characteristics for both cuts in the band of interest. Radiation efciency of the antenna is also shown in Fig. 8. As seen, radiation efciency is over 96% though the entire band. These show that SiC-based patch antennas radiate as well as the antennas made out of conventional RF materials such as FR4 and Rogers. In addition, the antenna has a gain around 2 dBi at 10 GHz, which is consistent with antennas in similar size from the literature [5][7]. Our next objective is to use computer simulations to evaluate a possibility of an all-SiC antenna. To achieve this, the gold radiating patch and ground planes are replaced with SiC epitaxial layers having very high electrical conductivity [8]. To show the effect of the SiC patches on the antenna performance, we have also performed return-loss simulations for the same SiC antenna designs. The conductivity value for SiC patches is taken as 10 S/m on the basis of the best experimental results obtained for the heavily doped SiC epitaxial layers grown by low-temperature epitaxial growth methods [9]. The simulated values of the return loss of the full SiC antenna are compared to the ones with gold-patch and PEC-patch SiC antennas, and the results are shown in Figs. 9 and 10, respectively. As expected, the replacement of metal patches with SiC signicantly affects the antenna performance, and in both cases,

412

IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 12, 2013

As a future work, we are aiming to fabricate a full SiC microstrip patch antenna. The substrate material will be made of semi-insulating SiC, and the patches and ground plane will be made of very highly dopped SiC. The simulation results show that such antennas can perform as good as their metal counterparts. V. CONCLUSION In this letter, the semi-insulating SiC material was successfully used as the dielectric substrate in the fabrication of microstrip patch antennas potentially suitable for monolithic integration and operation in harsh environments. As for the radiating element and ground plane, gold deposition was used on the front and backside of the SiC substrate. Two sample microstrip patch antennas are designed to operate at 10 GHz, and an agreement is observed at the band of operation for the measured and simulated reection coefcients of the antennas. In addition, it is shown that antenna bandwidth signicantly increases with the replacement of the gold layers with SiC material. The next step of this study will be to design, fabricate, and measure patch antennas that would consist of both SiC substrate materials and highly conductive SiC patch layers. Such a design will allow better interface between the substrate and the metal layers because of the use of same SiC material. The design and realization of antennas and electronics made of SiC materials will be the next step in realizing wireless systems that can withstand very high temperatures and that can be used in harsh environments such as in deep space. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Fig. 9. Comparison of simulated return loss of SiC, gold, and PEC patch cases for the rst antenna.

Fig. 8. Radiation efciency of the second antenna.

The authors acknowledge the help of SemiSouth Laboratories, Inc., with metal deposition on the SiC substrate. REFERENCES
[1] R. Kirschman, High Temperature Electronics. New York, NY, USA: WileyIEEE Press, 1998. [2] V. B. Shields, Applications of silicon carbide for high temperature electronics and sensors, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Tech Briefs, 0145-319X, Mar. 1996. [3] J. A. Cooper, Jr., Silicon carbide electronic devices and integrated circuits for extreme environments, in IEEE Aerosp. Conf. Proc., 2004, vol. 4, pp. 25072514. [4] D. M. Pozar, Microstrip antennas, Proc. IEEE, vol. 80, no. 1, pp. 7991, Jan. 1992. [5] C. Yoon, W. Lee, W. Kim, H. Lee, and H. Park, Compact bandnotched ultra-wideband printed antenna using inverted l-slit, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 143144, Jan. 2012. [6] K. Kiminami, A. Hirata, and T. Shiozawa, Double-sided printed bow-tie antenna for UWB communications, IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 3, pp. 152153, 2004. [7] C. Yoon, W. Kim, S. Kang, H. Lee, and H. Park, Printed monopole antenna on a thin substrate for UWB applications, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 53, no. 6, pp. 12621264, Jun. 2011. [8] B. Krishnan, S. P. Kotamraju, G. Melnychuk, H. Das, J. N. Merrett, and Y. Koshka, Heavily aluminum-doped epitaxial layers for ohmic contact formation to p-type 4H-SiC Produced by low-temperature homoepitaxial growth, J. Electron. Mater., vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 3438, 2010. [9] Y. Koshka, Method for epitaxial growth of silicon carbide at reduced temperatures, U.S. 7404858, Jul. 29, 2008.

Fig. 10. Comparison of simulated return loss of SiC, gold, and PEC patch cases for the second antenna.

the antenna operating frequency shifts to lower frequencies with a very signicant improvement in the bandwidth.