Reliability of AlGaAs/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors: an overview

摘要

This paper provides an overview of issues related to the reliability of the increasingly popular and important AlGaAs/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT), which has been used widely in very-high speed applications such as cellular phones and microwave systems. Topics covered include: (1) typical HBT post-burn-in characteristics, (2) physical mechanisms contributing to the HBT long-term current gain drift, (3) models for predicting the HBT mean time to failure (MTTF), and (4) non-typical HBT post-burn-in behavior and its physical insight.