Electrostatic discharge characterization of epitaxial-base silicon-germanium heterojunction bipolar transistors

Abstract

This paper investigates high-current and electrostatic discharge (ESD) phenomenon in pseudomorphic epitaxial-base silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBT) in base-collector, base-emitter, collector-emitter and collector-to-substrate configurations. Transmission line pulse (TLP) and ESD human body model (HBM) wafer-level reliability testing of SiGe HBT devices is completed for high-current characterization and evaluation of the ESD robustness of a BiCMOS SiGe technology.