Apr 27 2009
Second chance
I taped out a power amplifier a year ago.
I tested it in October and it turned out that it sucked.
Although it sucked, my circuit, along with my officemates’ circuits which also sucked, was good enough for 3rd place in a design contest.
We knew why it sucked: the MEMS device that we used was not electrically behaving as we thought it should. However, we couldn’t figure out why. We eventually found that there was a contact to the subtrate that we thought would be etched away but wasn’t. Since it wasn’t etched away, we had to FIB it. Right now the test MEMS device is working as it should which means that I should expect to see significantly better results when I test my power amplifier.
I get to test my power amplifier tomorrow. There is a possibility that tomorrow I will be a very happy grad student.