Experimental I-V characteristics of AlGaAs/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors with very thin bases

Author

Hsin, Y.M. ; Vu, D.P. ; Asbeck, P.M.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., California Univ., San Diego, La Jolla, CA

Volume

32

Issue

14

fYear

1996

fDate

7/4/1996 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1323

Lastpage

1324

Abstract

Npn abrupt AlGaAs/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors with thin base widths (W_B) down to 200 Å have been fabricated for the first time, and their collector and base current-voltage characteristics have been studied. The experimental results show that the surface recombination base current and the base bulk recombination current are both significantly lower in 200 Å base HBTs than in comparable devices with 500 Å base width. For the thin base HBTS, the base bulk recombination current density is proportional to ~W_B and the surface recombination current density is proportional to ~W_B². The experiment also showed that the collector current across a thin p⁺ GaAs base is limited, as expected, by the thermal velocity of the electrons rather than by conventional diffusive transport

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; aluminium compounds; characteristics measurement; electron-hole recombination; gallium arsenide; heterojunction bipolar transistors; semiconductor device testing; surface recombination; 200 angstrom; AlGaAs-GaAs; I-V characteristics; base bulk recombination current; base widths; collector current; heterojunction bipolar transistors; surface recombination base current; thermal velocity; very thin bases;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electronics Letters

Publisher

iet

ISSN

0013-5194

Type

jour

DOI

10.1049/el:19960853

Filename

503652