Review of silicon-germanium BICMOS technology after 4 years of production and future directions

Silicon Germanium (SiGe) HBTs have proven themselves as cheaper, viable replacements for GaAs in many different applications. SiGe RFIC products have been available for the last couple of years. SiGe SONET parts have also become available and demonstrate good performance. Adding to this product success, it has been possible to replace several GaAs chips with one silicon-germanium chip for yield, reliability, power, and cost improvements. Integration with low-power, digital CMOS has also been demonstrated in different applications. Digital CMOS application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) have been combined with SiGe HBT circuits. Various SiGe BICMOS ICs are in volume production in our CMOS fab. The quality of passive components such as inductors and capacitors is also approaching that of GaAs, enabling high-performance RF and networking circuits.