Precision electrical trimming of stacked Si/SiGe polycrystalline resistors available from the extrinsic base structure of a SiGe BiCMOS technology has been demonstrated for the first time. It is shown that pulse current trimming techniques can be used to trim the poly-SiGe resistors by up to 50% from their original values with accuracy better than /spl plusmn/0.5%. The temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) is shown to be linearly proportional to the percent change in electrically trimmed poly-SiGe resistance. Finally, we demonstrate resistance cycling using an electrical trim/recovery sequence, indicating that the technique is reversible and is governed by dopant segregation/diffusion mechanisms. The results are consistent with those obtained on conventional polysilicon resistors suggesting that the introduction of a strained SiGe layer does not adversely affect the electrical trim properties of these resistors.

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Precision electrical trimming of very low TCR poly-SiGe resistors

In this paper, the effects of different transistor design aspects on the noise behavior of SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors have been investigated. Selectively implanted collector, although retards the base push-out, does not deteriorate the noise characteristics. Moreover, a higher dopant implant in the extrinsic base region intended for a smaller base resistance does not deteriorate the noise characteristics. While the interface between the SiGe epitaxial and polycrystalline layers does not have any detrimental impact, the emitter-poly overlap significantly influences both the DC and the noise characteristics. Smaller emitter-poly overlap results in an increased non-ideal base current at lower bias voltages and produces appreciable generation–recombination noise. For all the transistors, except for the ones with smaller emitter-poly overlap, the base current noise power spectral density shows a near quadratic dependence on the base current, where the noise is believed to originate mostly from the superposition of the generation–recombination noise in the intrinsic emitter–base junction. The base current noise power spectral density for the transistors with a smaller emitter-poly overlap shows a near linear dependence on the base current, which results from an increased contribution from the trap-assisted tunneling fluctuations of the minority carriers at the surface of the emitter–base junction.

F. Wang

Papers

Effects of processing temperatures on device design rules for Silicon/Silicon Germanium heterojunction bipolar transistors