SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistor technology for RF application

SiGe bipolar transistor technology has made rapid progress and most major IC companies have a high-frequency BiCMOS fabrication capability incorporating SiGe HBTs.

Professor S Hall and Dr I Mitrovic

The activity in the department is centred on collaboration involving the Universities of Southampton, Queen’s Belfast and Surrey, together with industrial collaboration, which includes mitel semiconductor, silvaco and SiGe microsystems. The Liverpool contribution involves device characterisation and modelling together with the measurement of fundamental material parameters such as minority carrier lifetime. There is also interest in low voltage logic circuits. One such approach is Integrated injection logic, a very small geometry logic family which was slow due to charge storage. We are introducing Si-Ge into such structures to inhibit charge storage.
 

Concept for Low Voltage SiGe HBT Logic 

Figure 1 - Concept for high packing density, low voltage SiGe
HBT logic: emiiter-down switches form NOR logic

Back to: Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics