SKYWORKS DME2957-000

Skyworks beam-lead silicon Schottky barrier mixer diodes are designed for applications up to 40 GHz. The beam-lead design eliminates the bonding problems associated with the extremely small areas inherent to low-capacitance junctions.

Beam-lead Schottky barrier mixer diodes are fabricated by depositing an appropriate barrier metal on an epitaxial silicon substrate to form the junction. The choice of process and materials results in low series resistance and a tight distribution of capacitance values, enabling close impedance control.

Multiple forward voltage options are available, ranging from low values suited for low or under-driven local oscillator drive levels to high values suited for high-drive, low-distortion mixer applications. The capacitance range and series resistance are comparable to beam-lead devices through and including the Ka-band. These diodes are well suited for use in microwave integrated circuits (MICs).

Beam-lead Schottky barrier diodes are divided into six frequency ranges for general mixer applications: S, C, X, Ku, K, and Ka-band, as shown in Table 1. They can also be used as modulators and high-speed switches.

The low and consistent parasitics of beam-lead diodes make them suitable for balanced mixer applications.

• Low 1/f noise
• Low intermodulation distortion
• Statistical process control wafer fabrication

• Microwave Integrated Circuits
• Mixers
• Detectors