Hot-carrier effects on power characteristics of SiGe HBTs

Author

Huang, Sheng-Yi ; Chen, Kun-Ming ; Huang, Guo-Wei ; Tseng, Hua-Chou ; Hsu, Tsun-Lai ; Chang, Chun-Yen ; Huang, Tiao-Yuan

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron. Eng., National Chiao Tung Univ., Taiwan

Volume

25

Issue

6

fYear

2004

fDate

6/1/2004 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

393

Lastpage

395

Abstract

This letter investigates hot-carrier (HC) effects on the power characteristics of Si-SiGe HBTs using load-pull measurements. We found that the output power, power gain, and linearity of Si-SiGe HBTs are degraded after HC stress. Under constant base-current measurement, the HC-induced power performance degradation is found to be much worse than that under constant collector-current measurement. The HC effects on the cutoff frequency, nonlinearity terms of base-current and collector-current, and third-order intermodulation (IM3) cancellation effect have been analyzed to explain the experimental observations.

Keywords

heterojunction bipolar transistors; hot carriers; intermodulation distortion; silicon compounds; HBT linearity; HC stress; HC-induced power performance degradation; IM3 cancellation effect; Si-SiGe; Si-SiGe HBT; constant base-current measurement; constant collector-current measurement; cutoff frequency; heterojunction bipolar transistors; hot-carrier effects; load-pull measurements; power characteristics; power gain; third-order intermodulation; Cutoff frequency; Degradation; Germanium silicon alloys; Hot carrier effects; Hot carriers; Linearity; Power generation; Power measurement; Silicon germanium; Stress; HC; Hot-carrier; SiGe HBT; linearity; load-pull measurement; power; stress;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LED.2004.828589

Filename

1302237