Assessing reliability issues in cryogenically-operated SiGe HBTs

Author

Zhu, Chendong ; Grens, Curtis ; Zhao, Enhai ; Ahmed, Adnan ; Cressler, John D. ; Joseph, Alvin J.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Georgia Inst. of Technol., Atlanta, GA, USA

fYear

2005

fDate

9-11 Oct. 2005

Firstpage

41

Lastpage

44

Abstract

We assess SiGe HBTs for emerging mixed-signal cryogenic circuits designed to operate on the Moon without ambient heating or cooling (from +120C to as low as -230C), focusing of potential reliability issues. Comprehensive mixed-mode reliability stress data for these SiGe HBTs were measured from 300 K to 85 K. We extract the thermal resistance over temperature to evaluate the impact of the self-heating at low temperatures, explore the low-frequency noise performance at room temperature and cryogenic temperatures as a function of stress condition, and examine the impact of cooling on breakdown voltage and operating point instabilities for mixed-signal circuits.

Keywords

Ge-Si alloys; cooling; cryogenic electronics; heterojunction bipolar transistors; mixed analogue-digital integrated circuits; semiconductor device breakdown; semiconductor device reliability; space vehicle electronics; 300 to 85 K; SiGe; ambient cooling; ambient heating; breakdown voltage; cryogenic temperatures; cryogenically-operated HBT; heterojunction bipolar transistor; mixed-mode reliability stress data; mixed-signal cryogenic circuits; operating point instabilities; reliability issues; room temperature; thermal resistance; Circuits; Cooling; Cryogenics; Germanium silicon alloys; Heating; Moon; Silicon germanium; Temperature; Thermal resistance; Thermal stresses;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting, 2005. Proceedings of the

Print_ISBN

0-7803-9309-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/BIPOL.2005.1555197

Filename

1555197