Power performance of X-band Si-Si/sub 0.75/Ge/sub 0.25/-Si HBTs

Author

Zhenqiang Ma ; Mohammadi, S. ; Bhattacharya, P. ; Katehi, L.P.B. ; Alterovitz, S.A. ; Ponchak, G.E.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., Michigan Univ., Ann Arbor, MI, USA

fYear

2001

fDate

14-14 Sept. 2001

Firstpage

170

Lastpage

176

Abstract

High performance power SiGe-Si HBTs at X-band (8.4 GHz) frequency have been demonstrated. Under continuous wave operation, a single 10-finger Si-Si/sub 0.75/Ge/sub 0.25/-Si (emitter area of 780 /spl mu/m/sup 2/) HBT, biased at class AB, exhibits 29% peak PAE operating in common-emitter (C-E) mode and 42.1% peak PAE in common-base (C-B) mode with 25.7 dBm and 25 dBm P/sub out/ at peak PAE, respectively. The power gains at peak PAE for C-E and C-B mode operation are 6.1 dB and 7.1 dB, respectively. A 20-finger C-B HBT is capable of delivering 28.45 dBm (700 mW) of RF output power with 25% associated PAE. The peak PAE achieved with 20-finger C-B HBT is 32% with concurrent output power of 27.4 dBm. These represent the state-of-the-art power performance of SiGe-based HBTs. The performance difference between the common-emitter mode and the common-base mode has been analyzed.

Keywords

Ge-Si alloys; elemental semiconductors; heterojunction bipolar transistors; microwave bipolar transistors; microwave power transistors; semiconductor device measurement; semiconductor materials; silicon; 25 percent; 29 percent; 32 percent; 42.1 percent; 6.1 dB; 7.1 dB; 700 mW; 8.4 GHz; C-B HBT; RF output power; Si-Si/sub 0.75/Ge/sub 0.25/-Si; SiGe-based HBTs; X-band Si-Si/sub 0.75/Ge/sub 0.25/-Si HBTs; X-band frequency; class AB bias; common-base mode; common-emitter mode; concurrent output power; continuous wave operation; emitter area; peak PAE; power SiGe-Si HBTs; power gain; power performance; ten-finger Si-Si/sub 0.75/Ge/sub 0.25/-Si HBT; CMOS technology; FETs; Germanium silicon alloys; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; Linearity; Millimeter wave technology; Power amplifiers; Power generation; Radio frequency; Silicon germanium;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Silicon Monolithic Integrated Circuits in RF Systems, 2001. Digest of Papers. 2001 Topical Meeting on

Conference_Location

Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7129-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/SMIC.2001.942361

Filename

942361