Demonstration of aluminum-free metamorphic InP/In/sub 0.53/Ga/sub 0.47/As/InP double heterojunction bipolar transistors on GaAs substrates

We report, for the first time, the successful fabrication of aluminum-free metamorphic (MM) InP/In/sub 0.53/ Ga/sub 0.47/ As/InP double heterojunction bipolar transistors (DHBTs) on GaAs substrates with a linearly graded In/sub x/Ga/sub 1-x/P buffer grown by solid-source molecular beam epitaxy (SSMBE). Devices with 5×5 μm² emitters display a peak current gain of 40 and a common-emitter breakdown voltage (BV/sub CE0/) higher than 9 V, a current gain cut-off frequency (f_T) of 48 GHz and a maximum oscillation frequency (f_max) of 42 GHz. A minimum noise figure of 2.9 dB and associated gain of 19.5 dB were measured at a collector current level of 2.6 mA at 2 GHz. Detailed analysis suggests that the degradation of the base-emitter heterojunction interface and the increase of bulk recombination are the most probable causes for the poorer device performance of current metamorphic HBTs compared with lattice-matched HBTs.