Proton tolerance of third-generation, 0.12 μm 185 GHz SiGe HBTs

Author

Lu, Yuan ; Cressler, John D. ; Krithivasan, Ramkumar ; Li, Ying ; Reed, Robert A. ; Marshall, Paul W. ; Polar, Christopher ; Freeman, Greg ; Ahlgren, David

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Georgia Inst. of Technol., Atlanta, GA, USA

Volume

50

Issue

6

fYear

2003

Firstpage

1811

Lastpage

1815

Abstract

We present results on the impact of proton irradiation on the dc and ac characteristics of third-generation, 0.12 μm 185 GHz SiGe HBTs. Comparisons with prior technology generations are used to assess how the structural changes needed to enhance performance between second and third generation technology couple to the observed proton response. The results demonstrate that SiGe HBT technologies can successfully maintain their a Mrad-level total dose hardness, without intentional hardening, even when vertically-scaled in order to achieve unprecedented levels of transistor performance.

Keywords

Ge-Si alloys; S-parameters; heterojunction bipolar transistors; millimetre wave bipolar transistors; proton effects; radiation hardening (electronics); 185 GHz; AC characteristics; DC characteristics; Gummel characteristics; S-parameters; SiGe; inverse-mode characteristics; proton irradiation; structural changes; third-generation HBT; total dose hardness; Application specific integrated circuits; CMOS technology; Cutoff frequency; Frequency response; Germanium silicon alloys; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; Microelectronics; Protons; Silicon germanium; Space technology;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9499

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TNS.2003.820737

Filename

1263804