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Hot-Carrier Degradation in Silicon-Germanium Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors

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Hot Carrier Degradation in Semiconductor Devices

Abstract

While the SiGe HBT evolution has led to the significant proliferation of BiCMOS technologies and mixed-signal applications, a host of reliability issues has come to the forefront due to its suitability for multiple applications ranging from high-performance analog to millimeter-wave applications. Hot-carrier induced reliability degradation mechanism is one of the primary issues that strongly defines the safe-operating area of a SiGe HBT device and its usable lifetime. Understanding of the SiGe HBT reliability from hot-carrier induced degradation has developed significantly over the past few years. As the device performance gets scaled, a more predictive approach to understanding and estimating hot-carrier degradation is underway. This chapter attempts to highlight some of the important links that will define the future of hot-carrier reliability studies in SiGe HBTs.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Semiconductor Research Corporation and Texas Instruments. The authors are grateful to Hiroshi Yasuda, Philipp Menz, and Keith Green from Texas Instruments; and to the members of the SiGe Devices and Circuits Group (particularly Uppili Raghunathan, Brian Wier, Adilson Cardoso, Anup Omprakash, and Tikurete Gebremariam) for their many contributions to this chapter. The authors would like to specially thank Anup Omprakash and Michael Kroger for their assistance with the graphics, formatting, and proofreading of this chapter.

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  1. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Partha S. Chakraborty & John D. Cressler

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  1. Partha S. Chakraborty
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Correspondence to Partha S. Chakraborty .

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  1. Institute for Microelectronics, Vienna University of Technology, Wien, Austria

    Tibor Grasser

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Chakraborty, P.S., Cressler, J.D. (2015). Hot-Carrier Degradation in Silicon-Germanium Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors. In: Grasser, T. (eds) Hot Carrier Degradation in Semiconductor Devices. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08994-2_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08994-2_13

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