Sub-30-ps ECL circuit operation at liquid-nitrogen temperature using self-aligned epitaxial SiGe-base bipolar transistors

Author

Cressler, John D. ; Comfort, James H. ; Crabbe ; Patton, Gary L. ; Lee, Wai ; Sun, Jack Y C ; Stork, Johannes M C ; Meyerson, Bernard S.

Author_Institution

IBM Thomas J. Watson Res. Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA

Volume

12

Issue

4

fYear

1991

fDate

4/1/1991 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

166

Lastpage

168

Abstract

The authors report the operation of emitter coupled logic (ECL) circuits at liquid-nitrogen temperature using self-aligned epitaxial SiGe-base bipolar transistors. A minimum ECL gate delay of 28.1 ps at 84 K was measured; this is essentially unchanged from the room-temperature value of 28.8 ps at 310 K. This delay number was achieved under full logic-swing (500-mV) conditions and represents an improvement of greater than a factor of 2 over the best reported value for 84 K operation. Lower-power ECL circuits have switching speeds as fast as 51 ps at 2.2 mW (112-fJ power-delay product) at 84 K. These results suggest that silicon-based bipolar technology is suitable for very-high-speed applications in cryogenic computer systems.<>

Keywords

Ge-Si alloys; bipolar integrated circuits; bipolar transistors; elemental semiconductors; emitter-coupled logic; integrated logic circuits; semiconductor materials; silicon; 28.1 to 28.8 ps; 84 to 310 K; Si-SiGe; circuit operation; cryogenic computer systems; emitter coupled logic; full logic-swing; gate delay; liquid-nitrogen temperature; power-delay product; self-aligned epitaxial bipolar transistors; switching speeds; Application software; Bipolar transistors; CMOS technology; Circuits; Delay; Germanium silicon alloys; Nitrogen; Photonic band gap; Silicon germanium; Temperature;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/55.75752

Filename

75752