Title :
An experimental investigation of RF safe-operating-area (SOA) in SiGe HBTs on SOI
Author :
Cheng, Peng ; Seth, Sachin ; Grens, Curtis ; Thrivikraman, Tushar K. ; Bellini, Marco ; Cressler, John D. ; Babcock, Jeff ; Chen, Tianbing ; Kim, Jonggook ; Buchholz, Alan
Author_Institution :
Sch. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA, USA
Abstract :
The RF safe-operating-area of a variety of both bulk and thick-film SOI SiGe HBTs SiGe has been investigated using DC and pulsed-mode output characteristics, as well as RF gain and linearity measurements. SOI SiGe HBTs are found to suffer more from self-heating than bulk devices under DC operating conditions, as expected, due to their naturally higher thermal resistance. However, in terms of RF performance, operation of SiGe HBTs on SOI beyond the traditionally-defined safe-operating-area showed only minor degradation in RF metrics, and improved RF linearity. High-injection phenomena are suggested as possible explanations for the observed suppression of self-heating-induced degradation and thermal runaway in these SiGe HBTs on SOI operating under RF operating conditions.
Keywords :
heterojunction bipolar transistors; silicon compounds; silicon-on-insulator; HBT; RF linearity; RF metrics; RF safe-operating-area; SOI; SiGe; heterojunction bipolar transistors; high-injection phenomena; self-heating-induced degradation; silicon-on-insulator; thermal runaway; Electrical resistance measurement; Gain measurement; Germanium silicon alloys; Linearity; Pulse measurements; Radio frequency; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Silicon germanium; Thermal degradation; Thermal resistance;
Conference_Titel :
Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting, 2009. BCTM 2009. IEEE
Conference_Location :
Capri
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-4894-4
Electronic_ISBN :
1088-9299
DOI :
10.1109/BIPOL.2009.5314144
