Use of a transistor array to predict infant transistor mortality rate in InGaP/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistor technology

A novel circuit for measuring current gain, β on wafer for a very large number of individual transistors in InGaP/GaAs HBT Technology is presented. The circuit allows for accurately measuring β for as many as 25,000 individual transistors on a single wafer. The circuit gives good predictive capability of the infant failure rate of a given wafer without running a costly, time consuming reliability test or burn-in screen.