Fabrication of Small AlGaAs/GaAs HBT's for lntegrated Circuits Using New Bridged Base Electrode Technology

Takumi NITTONO  Koichi NAGATA  Yoshiki YAMAUCHI  Takashi MAKIMURA  Hiroshi ITO  Osaake NAKAJIMA 

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Electronics  Vol.E77-C  No.9  pp.1455-1463
Publication Date: 1994/09/20
Online ISSN: 
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Semiconductor Materials and Devices
Keyword: 
heterojunction bipolar transistor,  self-aligned structure,  oxygen-ion implantation,  zinc diffusion,  carbon doping, 

Full Text: PDF(911.2KB)

Summary: 
This paper describes small AlGaAs/GaAs HBT's for low-power and high-speed integrated circuits. The device fabrication is based on a new bridged base electrode technology that permits emitter width to be defined down to 1 µm. The new technology features oxygen-ion implantation for emitter-base junction isolation and zinc diffusion for extrinsic base formation. The oxygen-ion implanted emitter-base junction edge has been shown to provide a periphery recombination current much lower than that for the previous proton implanted edgs, the result being a much higher current gain particularly in small devices. The zinc diffusion offers high device yield and good uniformity in device characteristics even for a very thin (0.04 µm) base structure. An HBT with emitter dimensions of 12.4 µm2 yields an fT of 103 GHz and an fmax of 62 GHz, demonstrating that the new technology has a significant advantage in reducing the parasitic elements of small devices. Fabricated one-by-eight static frequency dividers and one-by-four/one-by-five two-modulus prescalers operate at frequencies over 10 GHz. The emitters of HBT's used in the divider are 12.4 µm2 in size, which is the smallest ever reported for AlGaAs/GaAs HBT IC's. These results indicate that the bridged base electrode technology is promising for developing a variety of high-speed HBT IC's.