High injection effects on noise characteristics of Si BJTs and SiGe HBTs

We present a physically based comparison of the current spectral densities in a SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBT) and a Si bipolar junction transistor (BJT) of identical geometry and doping levels, based on the direct evaluation of emitter, base and collector current fluctuations. An ensemble Monte Carlo (EMC) simulator self-consistently coupled with a 2D Poisson solver has been employed for the calculations. In the studied bias range, the largest reduction of the RF current noise values in the HBT as compared with the BJT derives from the spectral density of base current fluctuations, S_JB, and from the spectra of the cross-correlation between emitter and base current fluctuations, S_JBJE. This is due to the fact that the base current in the HBT is strongly reduced as a consequence of the lower gap of the SiGe base. At low injection, the collector spectral density S_JC exhibits a typical shot noise response while S_JB is governed by thermal noise. At high injection, the presence of hot carriers in the base–collector junction (which are less important in the HBT than in the BJT due to the SiGe/Si hetero-interface), the high carrier concentration in the base and the base push-out provokes the deviation of S_JC from the pure shot behavior. Under these conditions, the S_JB term can be neglected in the total noise analysis of the HBT for lower values of J_C, than in the BJT due to the Ge content benefits.