Fabrication, Performance, and Reliability of InP-Based HBTs

Abstract

ABSTRACTOver the past 10 years, heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) have progressed to where integrated circuit (IC) products are being sold and foundry services are being commercially offered utilizing gallium arsenide (GaAs) based technology. We will discuss, here, an alternative HBT technology based on indium phosphide (InP). While this technology is less mature than its GaAs counterpart, it offers several attractive benefits in comparison with GaAs. These benefits are provided through several key material properties of InP and ternary compound semiconductors, eg. gallium indium arsenide (GaInAs), grown on the InP. We review the status of this npn HBT technology and present performance results which illustrate the benefits of the technology with respect to electronic applications. Finally, we present measured reliability data for this technology which shows outstanding projected lifetimes.