First- and second-order electrical modelling and experiment on very high speed SiGeC heterojunction bipolar transistors

We present in this paper an electrical study centred on NPN heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs), realized in an industrial BiCMOS SiGe:C process, featuring high attractive performances (ft > 200 GHz) in terms of microwave behaviour and low-frequency noise; reaching this level of performance with good dc characteristics could be however a difficult challenge. Electrical modelling is investigated, using our 2D simulator, based on the drift-diffusion model (DDM). The simulations were very efficient for optimizing the devices. The dc and ac results obtained in this work are efficiently compared with electrical characteristics coming from measurements and SPICE-like parameter extractions, from simulations via a compact model (HICUM) implemented in the so-called commercial simulator ADS (advanced design system). This work was a first step for designing RF circuits like oscillators in a simple way.