Temperature dependence of single-event transients in SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors for cryogenic applications

We experimentally demonstrate that the dominant mechanism of single-event transients in silicon-germanium heterojunction bipolar transistors(SiGe HBTs)can change with decreasing temperature from+20℃to-180℃.This is accomplished by using a new well-designed cryogenic experimental system suitable for a pulsed-laser platform.Firstly,when the temperature drops from+20℃to-140℃,the increased carrier mobility drives a slight increase in transient amplitude.However,as the temperature decreases further below-140℃,the carrier freeze-out brings about an inflection point,which means the transient amplitude will decrease at cryogenic temperatures.To better understand this result,we analytically calculate the ionization rates of various dopants at different temperatures based on Altermatt's new incomplete ionization model.The parasitic resistivities with temperature on the charge-collection pathway are extracted by a two-dimensional(2D)TCAD process simulation.In addition,we investigate the impact of temperature on the novel electron-injection process from emitter to base under different bias conditions.The increase of the emitter-base junction's barrier height at low temperatures could suppress this electron-injection phenomenon.We have also optimized the built-in voltage equations of a high current compact model(HICUM)by introducing the impact of incomplete ionization.The present results and methods could provide a new reference for effective evaluation of single-event effects in bipolar transistors and circuits at cryogenic temperatures,and could provide a new evidence of the potential of SiGe technology in applications in extreme cryogenic environments.

非掺杂型Si/SiGe异质结外延与表征

以自旋为编码单元的硅基半导体量子计算与传统微电子工艺兼容,易拓展且可以同位素纯化提高退相干时间,因而备受关注.本研究工作通过分子束外延生长了高质量非掺杂型Si/SiGe异质结并测试了二维电子气迁移率.球差电镜观察到原子级尖锐界面,原子力显微镜表征显示其表面均方根粗糙度仅为0.44 nm,低温下迁移率达到20.21×10^(4)cm^(2)·V^(–1)·s^(–1).不同栅压下载流子浓度和迁移率的幂指数为1.026,材料丁格比值在7—12之间,表明载流子主要受到背景杂质散射和半导体/氧化物的界面散射.

基于SiGe BiCMOS的全集成射频功率放大器设计

提出了一种基于SiGe BiCMOS工艺的适用于移动设备的紧凑全集成功率放大器.设计采用cascode驱动级与共发射极功率级级联以提高放大器的功率增益,片上集成CMOS电源以提供偏置电流,采用分布式的镇流电阻和具有热负反馈效果的偏置电路补偿结温以防止放大器在高温工作时失效,并且采用一种紧凑的电路级的热耦合模型对所提出的热稳定措施进行仿真验证.后仿结果表明:PA在3.3 V供电下、2.4~2.5 GHz的工作范围内输出增益为32.5 dB,S11&S22<-10 dB,1 dB压缩点处的输出功率为25.4 dBm,在25℃的环境温度下最高结温小于65℃(饱和).芯片面积仅为1.25×0.76 mm^(2).测试结果表明:在-45~85℃的工作环境下,可以在增益要求为26.5~32.9 dB的应用中正常工作.1 dB压缩点处的输出功率为24.3 dBm.采用20 MHz 64-QAM OFDM信号测试,DEVM达到-30 dB的输出功率为18.1 dBm.

Sensitivity investigation of 100-MeV proton irradiation to SiGe HBT single event effect

The single event effect(SEE) sensitivity of silicon–germanium heterojunction bipolar transistor(Si Ge HBT) irradiated by 100-Me V proton is investigated. The simulation results indicate that the most sensitive position of the Si Ge HBT device is the emitter center, where the protons pass through the larger collector-substrate(CS) junction. Furthermore, in this work the experimental studies are also carried out by using 100-Me V proton. In order to consider the influence of temperature on SEE, both simulation and experiment are conducted at a temperature of 93 K. At a cryogenic temperature, the carrier mobility increases, which leads to higher transient current peaks, but the duration of the current decreases significantly.Notably, at the same proton flux, there is only one single event transient(SET) that occurs at 93 K. Thus, the radiation hard ability of the device increases at cryogenic temperatures. The simulation results are found to be qualitatively consistent with the experimental results of 100-Me V protons. To further evaluate the tolerance of the device, the influence of proton on Si Ge HBT after gamma-ray(^(60)Coγ) irradiation is investigated. As a result, as the cumulative dose increases, the introduction of traps results in a significant reduction in both the peak value and duration of the transient currents.

Interfacial photoconductivity effect of type-Ⅰ and type-Ⅱ Sb2Se3/Si heterojunctions for THz wave modulation

An in-depth understanding of the photoconductivity and photocarrier density at the interface is of great significance for improving the performance of optoelectronic devices. However, extraction of the photoconductivity and photocarrier density at the heterojunction interface remains elusive. Herein, we have obtained the photoconductivity and photocarrier density of 173 nm Sb2Se3/Si(type-Ⅰ heterojunction) and 90 nm Sb2Se3/Si(type-Ⅱ heterojunction) utilizing terahertz(THz) time-domain spectroscopy(THz-TDS) and a theoretical Drude model. Since type-Ⅰ heterojunctions accelerate carrier recombination and type-Ⅱ heterojunctions accelerate carrier separation, the photoconductivity and photocarrier density of the type-Ⅱ heterojunction(21.8×10^(4)S·m^(-1),1.5 × 10^(15)cm^(-3)) are higher than those of the type-Ⅰ heterojunction(11.8×10^(4)S·m^(-1),0.8×10^(15)cm^(-3)). These results demonstrate that a type-Ⅱ heterojunction is superior to a type-Ⅰ heterojunction for THz wave modulation. This work highlights THz-TDS as an effective tool for studying photoconductivity and photocarrier density at the heterojunction interface. In turn, the intriguing interfacial photoconductivity effect provides a way to improve the THz wave modulation performance.

Comparison of total dose effects on SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors induced by different swift heavy ion irradiation

The degradations in NPN silicon-germanium （SiGe） heterojunction bipolar transistors （HBTs） were fully studied in this work, by means of 25-MeV Si, 10-MeV C1, 20-MeV Br, and 10-MeV Br ion irradiation, respectively. Electrical parameters such as the base current （IB）, current gain （β）, neutral base recombination （NBR）, and Early voltage （VA） were investigated and used to evaluate the tolerance to heavy ion irradiation. Experimental results demonstrate that device degradations are indeed radiation-source-dependent, and the larger the ion nuclear energy loss is, the more the displacement damages are, and thereby the more serious the performance degradation is. The maximum degradation was observed in the transistors irradiated by 10-MeV Br. For 20-MeV and 10-MeV Br ion irradiation, an unexpected degradation in Ic was observed and Early voltage decreased with increasing ion fluence, and NBR appeared to slow down at high ion fluence. The degradations in SiGe HBTs were mainly attributed to the displacement damages created by heavy ion irradiation in the transistors. The underlying physical mechanisms are analyzed and investigated in detail.

Early effect modeling of silicon-on-insulator SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors

Silicon germanium （SiGe） heterojunction bipolar transistor （HBT） on thin silicon-on-insulator （SOI） has recently been demonstrated and integrated into the latest SOI BiCMOS technology. The Early effect of the SOI SiGe HBT is analysed considering vertical and horizontal collector depletion, which is different from that of a bulk counterpart. A new compact formula of the Early voltage is presented and validated by an ISE TCAD simulation. The Early voltage shows a kink with the increase of the reverse base-collector bias. Large differences are observed between SOI devices and their bulk counterparts. The presented Early effect model can be employed for a fast evaluation of the Early voltage and is useful to the design, the simulation and the fabrication of high performance SOI SiCe devices and circuits.

Analytical base collector depletion capacitance in vertical SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors fabricated on CMOS-compatible silicon on insulator

The base-collector depletion capacitance for vertical SiGe npn heterojunction bipolar transistors （HBTs） on silicon on insulator （SOI） is split into vertical and lateral parts. This paper proposes a novel analytical depletion capacitance model of this structure for the first time. A large discrepancy is predicted when the present model is compared with the conventional depletion model, and it is shown that the capacitance decreases with the increase of the reverse collector- base bias-and shows a kink as the reverse collector-base bias reaches the effective vertical punch-through voltage while the voltage differs with the collector doping concentrations, which is consistent with measurement results. The model can be employed for a fast evaluation of the depletion capacitance of an SOI SiGe HBT and has useful applications on the design and simulation of high performance SiGe circuits and devices.

Substrate bias effects on collector resistance in SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors on thin film silicon-on-insulator

An analytical expression for the co/lector resistance of a novel vertical SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistor （HBT） on thin film silicon-on-insulator （SOI） is obtained with the substrate bias effects being considered. The resistance is found to decrease slowly and then quickly and to have kinks with the increase of the substrate-collector bias, which is quite different from that of a conventional bulk HBT. The model is consistent with the simulation result and the reported data and is useful to the frequency characteristic design of 0.13 μtm millimeter-wave SiGe SOI BiCMOS devices.

Heavy Ion and Laser Microbeam Induced Current Transients in SiGe Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor

Silicon-germanium （SiGe） hereto-junction bipolar transistor current transients induced by pulse laser and heavy iron are measured using a real-time digital oscilloscope. These transients induced by pulse laser and heavy iron exhibit the same waveform and charge collection time except for the amplitude of peak current. Different laser energies and voltage biases under heavy ion irradiation also have impact on current transient, whereas the waveform remains unchanged. The position-correlated current transients suggest that the nature of the current transient is controlled by the behavior of the C/S junction.

A device model for thin silicon-on-insulator SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors with saturation effects

In this paper, we describe the saturation effect of a silicon germanium （SiGe） heterojunction bipolar transistor （HBT） fabricated on a thin silicon-on-insulator （SOI） with a step-by-step derivation of the model formulation. The collector injection width, the internal base-collector bias, and the hole density at the base-collector junction interface are analysed by considering the unique features of the internal and the external parts of the collector, as they are different from those of a bulk counterpart.

Effects of buried oxide layer on working speed of SiGe heterojunction photo-transistor

The effects of buried oxide(BOX)layer on the capacitance of SiGe heterojunction photo-transistor(HPT),including the collector-substrate capacitance,the base-collector capacitance,and the base-emitter capacitance,are studied by using a silicon-on-insulator(SOI)substrate as compared with the devices on native Si substrates.By introducing the BOX layer into Si-based SiGe HPT,the maximum photo-characteristic frequency ft,opt of SOI-based SiGe HPT reaches up to 24.51 GHz,which is 1.5 times higher than the value obtained from Si-based SiGe HPT.In addition,the maximum optical cut-off frequency fβ,opt,namely its 3-dB bandwidth,reaches up to 1.13 GHz,improved by 1.18 times.However,with the increase of optical power or collector current,this improvement on the frequency characteristic from BOX layer becomes less dominant as confirmed by reducing the 3-dB bandwidth of SOI-based SiGe HPT which approaches to the 3-dB bandwidth of Si-based SiGe HPT at higher injection conditions.

Impact of proton-induced alteration of carrier lifetime on single-event transient in SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistor

This paper presents an investigation into the impact of proton-induced alteration of carrier lifetime on the singleevent transient(SET) caused by heavy ions in silicon–germanium heterojunction bipolar transistor(SiGe HBT).The ioninduced current transients and integrated charge collections under different proton fluences are obtained based on technology computer-aided design(TCAD) simulation.The results indicate that the impact of carrier lifetime alteration is determined by the dominating charge collection mechanism at the ion incident position and only the long-time diffusion process is affected.With a proton fluence of 5 × 1013 cm-2, almost no change is found in the transient feature, and the charge collection of events happened in the region enclosed by deep trench isolation(DTI), where prompt funneling collection is the dominating mechanism.Meanwhile, for the events happening outside DTI where diffusion dominates the collection process, the peak value and the duration of the ion-induced current transient both decrease with increasing proton fluence, leading to a great decrease in charge collection.

Weak avalanche multiplication in SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors on thin film silicon-on-insulator

In this paper, we propose an analytical avalanche multiplication model for the next generation of SiGe silicon- on-insulator （SOI） heterojunction bipolar transistors （HBTs） and consider their vertical and lateral impact ionizations for the first time. Supported by experimental data, the analytical model predicts that the avalanche multiplication governed by impact ionization shows kinks and the impact ionization effect is small compared with that of the bulk HBT, resulting in a larger base-collector breakdown voltage. The model presented in the paper is significant and has useful applications in the design and simulation of the next generation of SiCe SOI BiCMOS technology.

SiC based Si/SiC heterojunction and its rectifying characteristics

The Si on SiC heterojunction is still poorly understood, although it has a number of potential applications in electronic and optoelectronic devices, for example, light-activated SiC power switches where Si may play the role of an light absorbing layer. This paper reports on Si films heteroepitaxially grown on the Si face of （0001） n-type 6H-SiC substrates and the use of B2H6 as a dopant for p-Si grown at temperatures in a range of 700-950℃. X-ray diffraction （XRD） analysis and transmission electron microscopy （TEM） tests have demonstrated that the samples prepared at the temperatures ranged from 850℃ to 900℃ are characterized as monocrystalline silicon. The rocking XRD curves show a well symmetry with FWHM of 0.4339° Omega. Twin crystals and stacking faults observed in the epitaxial layers might be responsible for widening of the rocking curves. Dependence of the crystal structure and surface topography on growth temperature is discussed based on the experimental results. The energy band structure and rectifying characteristics of the Si/SiC heterojunctions are also preliminarily tested.

Multiple SiGe/Si layers epitaxy and SiGe selective etching for vertically stacked DRAM

Fifteen periods of Si/Si_(0.7)Ge_(0.3)multilayers(MLs)with various Si Ge thicknesses are grown on a 200 mm Si substrate using reduced pressure chemical vapor deposition(RPCVD).Several methods were utilized to characterize and analyze the ML structures.The high resolution transmission electron microscopy(HRTEM)results show that the ML structure with 20 nm Si_(0.7)Ge_(0.3)features the best crystal quality and no defects are observed.Stacked Si_(0.7)Ge_(0.3)ML structures etched by three different methods were carried out and compared,and the results show that they have different selectivities and morphologies.In this work,the fabrication process influences on Si/Si Ge MLs are studied and there are no significant effects on the Si layers,which are the channels in lateral gate all around field effect transistor(L-GAAFET)devices.For vertically-stacked dynamic random access memory(VS-DRAM),it is necessary to consider the dislocation caused by strain accumulation and stress release after the number of stacked layers exceeds the critical thickness.These results pave the way for the manufacture of high-performance multivertical-stacked Si nanowires,nanosheet L-GAAFETs,and DRAM devices.

A single-event transient induced by a pulsed laser in a silicon-germanium heterojunction bipolar transistor

A study on the single event transient （SET） induced by a pulsed laser in a silicon-germanium （SiGe） heterojunction bipolar transistor （HBT） is presented in this work. The impacts of laser energy and collector load resistance on the SET are investigated in detail. The waveform, amplitude, and width of the SET pulse as well as collected charge are used to characterize the SET response. The experimental results are discussed in detail and it is demonstrated that the laser energy and load resistance significantly affect the SET in the SiGe HBT. Furthermore, the underlying physical mechanisms are analyzed and investigated, and a near-ideal exponential model is proposed for the first time to describe the discharge of laser-induced electrons via collector resistance to collector supply when both base-collector and collector-substrate junctions are reverse biased or weakly forward biased. Besides, it is found that an additional multi-path discharge would play an important role in the SET once the base-collector and collector-substrate junctions get strongly forward biased due to a strong transient step charge by the laser pulse.

Indium–tin oxide films obtained by DC magnetron sputtering for improved Si heterojunction solar cell applications

The indium-tin oxide （ITO） film as the antireflection layer and front electrodes is of key importance to obtaining high efficiency Si heterojunction （HJ） solar cells. To obtain high transmittance and low resistivity ITO films by direct-current （DC） magnetron sputtering, we studied the impacts of the ITO film deposition conditions, such as the oxygen flow rate, pressure, and sputter power, on the electrical and optical properties of the ITO films. ITO films of resistivity of 4 x 10-4 ~.m and average transmittance of 89% in the wavelength range of 380-780 nm were obtained under the optimized conditions： oxygen flow rate of 0.1 sccm, pressure of 0.8 Pa, and sputtering power of 110 W. These ITO films were used to fabricate the single-side HJ solar cell without an intrinsic a-Si：H layer. However, the best HJ solar cell was fabricated with a lower sputtering power of 95 W, which had an efficiency of 11.47%, an open circuit voltage （Voc） of 0.626 V, a filling factor （FF） of 0.50, and a short circuit current density （Jsc） of 36.4 mA/cm2. The decrease in the performance of the solar cell fabricated with high sputtering power of 110 W is attributed to the ion bombardment to the emitter. The Voc was improved to 0.673 V when a 5 nm thick intrinsic a-Si：H layer was inserted between the （p） a-Si：H and （n） c-Si layer. The higher Voc of 0.673 V for the single-side HJ solar cell implies the excellent c-Si surface passivation by a-Si：H.

Simulation and experimental study of a novel bifacial structure of silicon heterojunction solar cell for high efficiency and low cost

A novel structure of Ag gridlSiNx/n＋-c-Si/n-c-Si/i-a-Si：H/p＋-a-Si：HlTCO/Ag grid was designed to increase the ef- ficiency of bifacial amorphous/crystalline silicon-based solar cells and reduce the rear material consumption and production cost. The simulation results show that the new structure obtains higher efficiency compared with the typical bifa- cial amorphous/crystalline silicon-based solar cell because of an increase in the short-circuit current （Jsc）, while retaining the advantages of a high open-circuit voltage, low temperature coefficient, and good weak-light performance. Moreover, real cells composed of the novel structure with dimensions of 75 mm×75 mm were fabricated by a special fabrication recipe based on industrial processes. Without parameter optimization, the cell efficiency reached 21.1% with the Jsc of 41.7 mA/cm^2. In addition, the novel structure attained 28.55% potential conversion efficiency under an illumination of AM 1.5 G, 100 mW/cm^2. We conclude that the configuration of the Ag grid/SiNx/n＋-c-Si/n-c-Si/i-a-Si：H/p＋-a-Si：H/TCO/Ag grid is a promising structure for high efficiency and low cost.