Title :
Ionization effect on SiGe HBT power limitation in the millimeter wave frequency range
Author :
Pottrain, Alexandre ; Lacave, Thomas ; Gloria, Daniel ; Chevalier, Pascal ; Pourchon, Franck ; Derrier, Nicolas ; Gaquière, Christophe
Author_Institution :
Microwave Power Devices Group, IEMN, Villeneuve-d´´Ascq, France
Abstract :
Load-pull measurements at 94 GHz are performed on last-generation SiGe HBTs, in order to understand the origins of the power constraints in the presence of millimeter-wave excitations. A very accurate HICUM model is used for the devices under test to correlate measurement results and physical phenomena. In such a way, we investigate the ionization and self-heating effects on the power limitations in high-frequency nonlinear device operation. We show that the impact ionization is the major limitation on power improvement.
Keywords :
Ge-Si alloys; heterojunction bipolar transistors; ionisation; millimetre waves; HBT power limitation; HICUM model; correlate measurement; high-frequency nonlinear device operation; impact ionization; ionization effect; load-pull measurement; millimeter wave frequency range; millimeter-wave excitation; power constraint; self-heating effect; Current measurement; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; Ionization; Load modeling; Power measurement; Silicon germanium; Voltage measurement; SiGe HBT; ionization; large-signal characterization; millimeter-wave characterization;
Conference_Titel :
Microwave Integrated Circuits Conference (EuMIC), 2011 European
Conference_Location :
Manchester
Print_ISBN :
978-1-61284-236-3