Reliability of submicron InGaAs/InP DHBT under thermal and electrical stresses

Abstract We report on the reliability of InGaAs/InP DHBT technology which has applications in very high-speed ICs (over 100 Gbits/s). This work presents the results of accelerated aging tests under thermal and electrical stresses performed on HBT up to 2000 h. Stress conditions consist in applying collector–emitter bias V CE from 1.3 to 2.7 V and collector current densities J C of 400 and 610 kA/cm 2 . The corresponding junction temperatures T J extends from 83 to 137 °C. The base current ideality factor η B increase and the current gain β decrease have revealed a degradation of the base–emitter junction. The normalized current gain β norm drop has occurred earlier for higher V CE and/or higher T J . A 20% decrease of β norm chosen as the failure criterion leads to an activation energy of 1.1 eV.

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