Evaluation of operation lifetime of microwave low noise NPN bipolar junction transistor

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, the lifetime of microwave low noise NPN bipolar junction transistor under three operation modes are deeply investigated. Experiment results shows that the electrical parameters keep nearly unchanged when a steady electrical stress is applied over 2000 h at 125°C. The junction temperature (Tj) is found to have a significant influence on the operation lifetime. The samples begin to fail once Tj is higher than 225°C. Furthermore, the higher the junction temperature is, the earlier the failure occurs, and the shorter the lifetime is. The accumulated damages near Si/SiO2 interface around BE junction are contributed to the failure under high temperature. The estimated mean time to failure based on the failure data under high Tj is higher than that from non-failure data under low Tj. HTRB stress are found to be able to result in damages around LOCOS edge under BC junction, but the induced variation of related electrical parameters is still far below the specified failure criterion. All these data obtained here can provide a reliability foundation for bipolar transistors.