Porous silicon technology for RF integrated circuit applications

Abstract

Coplanar transmission lines were fabricated on porous silicon layers of varying thickness, in the range of 1-15 /spl mu/m, on silicon substrates. For suitably thick porous silicon regions, the capacitive coupling to the conducting silicon substrate and the associated attenuation are suppressed. The use of porous silicon layers thus provides an approach to incorporate high performance transmission lines in a silicon-based monolithic integrated circuit process.