Proton tolerance of advanced SiGe HBTs fabricated on different substrate materials

Abstract

The proton tolerance of SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) fabricated on a variety of substrate materials is investigated for the first time. The present SiGe HBT BiCMOS technology represents only the second commercially-available SiGe process to be reported for radiation effects. SiGe HBT dc and ac performance is compared for devices fabricated on silicon-on-insulator (SOI), low resistivity, and high resistivity silicon substrates, and all are found to be total dose tolerant to multi-Mrad radiation levels. We also compare these radiation results to those previously reported for other commercially-available SiGe technologies.