Hot-Carrier Degradation in Silicon-Germanium Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors

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.