Thermal design and simulation of bipolar integrated circuits

Keeping device operating temperatures within reasonable limits is necessary for reliability of all ICs and important for achieving the expected performance for many ICs. GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) offer high speed and good device matching characteristics that are attractive for many high-speed circuits, but they are more susceptible than other IC technologies to the unexpected generation of very high junction temperatures. The reasons for this tendency are discussed, and an HBT sample-and-hold (S/H) circuit that had device temperature rises of over 300°C is described. To address this problem, a new thermal simulation tool called ThCalc was created. ThCalc calculates the temperature profile of an IC and runs fast enough to allow calculations on a whole chip. ThCalc was used to redesign the S/H IC to reduce the largest temperature rise by a factor of 2.7 with a minimal impact on circuit size