Jm. Roldan et al., NEUTRON RADIATION TOLERANCE OF ADVANCED UHV CVD SIGE HBT BICMOS TECHNOLOGY/, IEEE transactions on nuclear science, 44(6), 1997, pp. 1965-1973
The effects of 1.0 MeV neutron irradiation on both SiGe heterojunction
bipolar transistors (HBTs) and Si CMOS transistors from an advanced u
ltra high vacuum chemical vapour deposition (UHV/CVD) SiGe BICMOS tech
nology are examined for the first time over the temperature range of 3
00K to 84K. Results at 300K indicate that this Sice technology is robu
st with respect to neutron radiation. At fluences as high as 10(15) n/
cm(2) (1.0 MeV equivalent) the devices exhibited a degradation of less
than 30% in peak current gain. The SiGe HBTs maintain a current gain
of 60 after 10(15) n/cm(2) at 84K, compared to the Si BST which degrad
es with cooling to a current gain of 20 at 84K. The cutoff frequencies
of both the Si and SiGe transistors are unaffected by neutron irradia
tion, and only a slight degradation in the maximum oscillation frequen
cy of the transistors was observed.