Effect of bulk recombination current on the current gain of GaAs/AlGaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors in GaAs-on-Si

Author

Ma, Tony ; Lee, Won-Seong ; Adkisson, James W. ; Harris, James S., Jr.

Author_Institution

Stanford Electron. Lab., Stanford Univ., CA, USA

Volume

10

Issue

10

fYear

1989

Firstpage

458

Lastpage

460

Abstract

The effect of bulk recombination current on the current gain of heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) in GaAs-on-Si has been studied. A thin AlGaAs emitter layer is used to prevent an exposed extrinsic base region, which has previously masked the effect of the bulk recombination current on the current gain in HBTs. It is found that once the surface recombination current is removed, the current grain due to bulk recombination alone is approximately ten times lower for the HBTs in GaAs-on-Si than for HBTs in GaAs. The difference in the current gain is probably due to electrically active dislocations in the base in the HBTs in GaAs-on-Si, where the density is about 10/sup 8/ cm/sup -2/ as measured by transmission electron microscopy.<>

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; aluminium compounds; electron-hole recombination; gallium arsenide; heterojunction bipolar transistors; transmission electron microscope examination of materials; GaAs-AlGaAs; GaAs-Si; HBTs; bulk recombination current; current gain; electrically active dislocations; exposed extrinsic base region; heterojunction bipolar transistors; surface recombination current; transmission electron microscopy; Current measurement; Density measurement; Electric variables measurement; Gain measurement; Gallium arsenide; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; Transmission electron microscopy;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/55.43099

Filename

43099