SiGe HBT and BiCMOS technologies for optical transmission and wireless communication systems

Technologies for a self-aligned SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) and SiGe HBTs with CMOS transistors (SiGe BiCMOS) have been developed for use in optical transmission and wireless communication systems. n-Si cap/SiGe-base multilayer fabricated by selective epitaxial growth (SEG) was used to obtain both high-speed and low-power performance for the SiGe HBTs. The process except the SEG is almost completely compatible with well-established Si bipolar-CMOS technology, and the SiGe HBT and BiCMOS were fabricated on a 200-mm wafer line. High-quality passive elements, i.e., high-precision poly-Si resistors, a high-Q varactor, an MIM capacitor, and high-Q spiral inductors have also been developed to meet the demand for integration of the sophisticated functions. A cutoff frequency of 130 GHz, a maximum oscillation frequency of 180 GHz, and an ECL gate-delay time of 5.3 ps have been demonstrated for the SiGe HBTs. An IC chipset for 40-Gb/s optical-fiber links, a single-chip 10-Gb/s transceiver large-scale IC (LSI), a 5.8-GHz electronic toll collection transceiver IC, and other practical circuits have been implemented by applying the SiGe HBT or BiCMOS technique.