Modeling And Characterization Of Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors

The high power operation of the heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) has been analyzed by experimentally determining the junction temperature and separating temperature effects from other high power effects. In addition, an HBT large signal model has been developed that is valid for the linear, saturation, and cutoff regions, with low frequency temperature effects included. This model has been implemented in a commercial harmonic balance simulator, LIBRA from EEsof, making it particularly suitable for the design and simulation of HBT microwave power integrated circuits. In addition, an analysis of the most temperature-sensitive microwave elements for the HBT has been performed using measured s-parameter data at five elevated temperatures from 23 deg. C to 226 deg. C. The element values were compared to a physical model showing excellent agreement in magnitude and direction of change with temperature and bias. The transistor cutoff frequencies were also measured and calculated, showing a monotonic decrease with temperature of approximately 50% over the 200 deg. C range. Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor, Large Signal Modeling, Thermal Effects.

The semiconductor industry is a fundamental building block of the new economy, there is no area of modern life untouched by the progress of nanoelectronics. The electronic chip is becomingan ever-increasing portion of system solutions, starting initially from less than 5% in the 1970 microcomputer era, to more than 60% of the final cost of a mobile telephone, 50% of the price of a personal computer (representing nearly 100% of the functionalities) and 30% of the price of a monitor in the early 2000’s.Interest in utilizing the (sub-)mm-wave frequency spectrum for commercial and research applications has also been steadily increasing. Such applications, which constitute a diverse but sizeable future market, span a large variety of areas such as health, material science, mass transit, industrial automation, communications, and space exploration.Silicon-Germanium Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors for mm-Wave Systems Technology, Modeling and Circuit Applications provides an overview of results of the DOTSEVEN EU research project, and as such focusses on key material developments for mm-Wave Device Technology. It starts with the motivation at the beginning of the project and a summary of its major achievements. The subsequent chapters provide a detailed description of the obtained research results in the various areas of process development, device simulation, compact device modeling, experimental characterization, reliability, (sub-)mm-wave circuit design and systems.