CMOS compatible, self-biased bipolar transistor aimed at detecting maximum temperature in a silicon integrated circuit

A new bipolar device, fully CMOS compatible, that properly detects and amplifies the leakage current of a reverse-biased bulk junction is presented. The amplification factor is the current gain hFE of the bipolar transistor which is maximised and independent of all spurious and less reproducible surface and space-charge recombination mechanisms.