Title :
GaAs HBT Reliability
Author :
Yeats, B. ; Low, T.S. ; Alt, K. ; Adamski, M.E. ; Bonse, M. ; Avanzo, D. C D ; Dvorak, M. ; Hutchinson, C.P. ; Iwamoto, M. ; Kellert, F.G. ; Kuhn, D.K. ; Shimon, R.L. ; Shirley, T.E.
Author_Institution :
Agilent Technol., Santa Rosa, CA
Abstract :
We discuss the many factors affecting the reliability of GaAs HBTs that we have encountered starting from the early days of AlGaAs-emitter HBTs through the present day use of InGaP-emitter HBTs. We discuss both wearout and infancy failure modes and try to distinguish fundamental (i.e., unavoidable) from nonfundamental failure modes. We have found that infant failures are dominated by substrate dislocation density, which can limit long-term-reliable circuit sizes to under ~1000 transistors.
Keywords :
III-V semiconductors; aluminium compounds; failure analysis; gallium arsenide; gallium compounds; heterojunction bipolar transistors; indium compounds; semiconductor device reliability; AlGaAs-GaAs; GaAs; HBT reliability; InGaP-GaAs; fundamental failure modes; infancy failure modes; long-term-reliable circuit; nonfundamental failure modes; wearout failure modes; Acceleration; Circuits; Failure analysis; Gallium arsenide; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; Instruments; Material properties; Materials reliability; Passivation; Temperature;
Conference_Titel :
Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuits Symposium, 2008. CSIC '08. IEEE
Conference_Location :
Monterey, CA
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-1939-5
Electronic_ISBN :
1550-8781
DOI :
10.1109/CSICS.2008.14
