Silicon and gallium arsenide in high temperature electronics applications

Electronic circuits and systems which can operate at temperatures up to 250°C or even higher become more and more important. It can be shown that Si as semiconductor material can be used up to this temperature provided that circuit structures are optimized to handle the parasitic effects rising with temperature. For even higher temperatures up to 350°C GaAs can be used. Other problems going along with high temperature applications arise from material characteristics such as melting point, mechanical stability, insulating characteristics and migration problems. This paper reports on a German joint Research project dealing with the problems mentioned above. Some of them could be solved satisfactory, some problems still exist