GaInP Selective Area Epitaxy for Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor Applications

Abstract

AbstractA study of selective area epitaxy (SAE) of GalnP lattice matched to GaAs is presented. The selectively regrown GaInP is used as the emitter of a novel heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) device structure. Successful SAE of GalnP on both dark field (mostly covered) and light field (mostly open) SiO2 masks is compared. To characterize the critical regrown heterojunction, diodes and HBTs were fabricated and measured. It is found that a pre-growth pause of either TEGa or PH3 results in forward bias characteristics with low leakage and an ideality factor of ~1.25, indicating low interfacial defect density. Non-self aligned regrown emitter HBTs grown with a dark field mask scheme have been fabricated. Devices with an emitter area of 3x12 μm exhibit small signal current gain up to 80 with an fT and fMAX of 22 GHz and 18 GHz, respectively. To further improve the performance of these devices, a structure with a self-aligned refractory metal base contact and light field regrowth is proposed.