High-reliability GaAs HBT monolithic microwave amplifier

Author

Yamada, F.M. ; Oki, A.K. ; Streit, D.C. ; Umemoto, D.K. ; Tran, L.T. ; Block, T.R. ; Okazaki, D.T. ; Hoppe, M.M. ; Rezek, E.A.

Author_Institution

Electron. & Technol. Div., TRW Inc., Redondo Beach, CA, USA

fYear

1997

fDate

10-10 June 1997

Firstpage

193

Lastpage

196

Abstract

High-reliability performance of an X-band high-intercept MMIC amplifier fabricated using a production GaAs/AlGaAs HBT process technology is reported. Operating at 20 kA/cm/sup 2/ quiescent collector current density, the single-stage balanced amplifier with on-chip regulation has a projected median-time-to-failure (MTF) determined by three-temperature constant-stress accelerated lifetest using |/spl Delta/S21|>1.0 dB as the failure criterion. Additionally, an activation energy (Ea) of 1.2 eV and log-standard deviation (/spl sigma/) of 0.7 was measured. This is the first report of HBT reliability based on small-signal microwave characteristics of HBT MMIC amplifiers under lifetest.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; MMIC amplifiers; aluminium compounds; bipolar MMIC; characteristics measurement; differential amplifiers; failure analysis; gallium arsenide; integrated circuit measurement; integrated circuit reliability; integrated circuit testing; life testing; 1.2 eV; 125 degC; 4E7 h; GaAs-AlGaAs; HBT monolithic microwave amplifier; IC reliability; MMIC amplifier; X-band; activation energy; failure criterion; log-standard deviation; median-time-to-failure; production HBT process technology; quiescent collector current density; single-stage balanced amplifier; small-signal microwave characteristics; three-temperature constant-stress accelerated lifetest; Artificial intelligence; Gallium arsenide; Gold; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; Integrated circuit technology; MMICs; Microwave amplifiers; Molecular beam epitaxial growth; Production systems; Space technology;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium, 1997., IEEE

Conference_Location

Denver, CO, USA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-4063-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/RFIC.1997.598781

Filename

598781