The Inflection Point of Single Event Transient in SiGe HBT at a Cryogenic Temperature

Abstract

Basing our findings on our previous pulsed laser testing results, we have experimentally demonstrated that there is an inflection point of a single event transient (SET) in the silicon-germanium heterojunction bipolar transistors (SiGe HBTs) with a decreasing temperature from +20 °C to −180 °C. Additionally, the changes in the parasitic resistivity of the carrier collection pathway due to incomplete ionization could play a key role. In this paper, we found that the incident-heavy ion’s parameters could also have an important impact on the SET inflection point by introducing the ion track structures generated by Geant4 simulation to the TCAD transient simulation. Heavy ion with a low linear energy transfer (LET) will not trigger the ion shunt effect of SiGe HBT and the inflection point will not occur until −200 °C. For high LET ions’ incidence, the high-density electron-hole pairs (EHPs) could significantly affect the parasitic resistivity on the pathway and lead to an earlier inflection point. The present results and methods could provide a new reference for the effective evaluation of single-event effects in bipolar transistors and circuits at cryogenic temperatures and provide new evidence of the SiGe technology’s potential for applications in extreme cryogenic environments.