FOCUSED ION-BEAM TRIMMING TECHNIQUES FOR MMIC CIRCUIT OPTIMIZATION

Focused Ion Beam (FIB) trimming techniques for circuit optimization fo r GaAs MMICs by adjusting the parameters of IC components such as resi stors, capacitors, microstrip lines, and FETs have been developed. The adjustment is performed by etching of the components and depositing o f metal films for micro-strip lines. This technology turned out to be in need of only half a day to optimize the circuit pattern without any further wafer processes, while a conventional method that is comprise d of revising mask pattern and following several cycles of wafer proce ss has needed 0.5-1.0 year requiring huge amount of development cost. This technology has been successfully applied to optimization of an X- band low dissipation current single stage MMIC amplifier, and has show n its great feasibility for shortening the turn around time.