On the physical nature of the base current 1/f noise typical for SiGe HBTs and Si BJTs made by SEG/NSEG epitaxy

Lukyanchikova, N., Garbar, N., Smolanka, A., Lokshin, M., Hall, S., Buiu, O., Mitrovic, I., El Mubarek, H.A.W. and Ashburn, P. (2006) On the physical nature of the base current 1/f noise typical for SiGe HBTs and Si BJTs made by SEG/NSEG epitaxy. E-MRS, European Materials Research Society, Nice, France. 28 May - 01 Jun 2006.

Abstract

It is shown that the high base current and associated low-frequency noise typical for the SiGe HBTs prepared by the selective epitaxial growth of the collector and non-selective epitaxial growth of the base and emitter (SEG/NSEG technology), can be explained by the mechanical stress between the collector and the field oxide surrounding the collector in these devices. The reason is that such stress provokes the viscous flow of the surface oxide producing an ‘action-at-distance’ effect which results in the creation of additional fast and slow surface centers at the poly/single crystal emitter and passivating oxide interfaces respectively. The increase of fast center density increases the recombination base current component while the increase of the slow centers density increases the intensity of the 1/f noise source. As a result, any factor that promotes the reduction of the stress or the decrease of the intensity of the surface oxide viscous flow serves to decrease the base current and its 1/f noise. Thus we have found that we can mitigate the undesirable effects by the following solutions: increasing the temperature of the selective epitaxial growth of the collector TSEG, decreasing the temperature of the rapid thermal activation TRTA, implantation of the BF2 implant into the field oxide before the collector and base layers are being grown, replacement of the bulk substrate by SOI. It is shown that the maximal decrease of the base current IB and of the spectral density of the 1/f noise SIB are as high as factors of 30 and 8,000, respectively.

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