Trade-off between the Kirk effect and the breakdown performance in resurfed lateral bipolar transistors for high voltage, high frequency applications

The trade-off between the breakdown performance and the Kirk effect has bee n evaluated and compared among conventional bipolar transistors and resurfe d lateral bipolar transistors. It was demonstrated that the traditional con flict of differing requirements on W-c and N-c by the breakdown performance and the Kirk effect can be eased by incorporating the resurf principle. Co mparative studies have been carried out between the optimized devices with breakdown voltages from 20 to 40 V. It is shown that for an identical break down voltage, the high-current-level performance of the resurfed devices ca n be significantly improved by incorporating a gradually doped collector re gion. This further leads to a significant increase in the cut-off frequency without degrading the breakdown performance. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd . All rights reserved.