{"title":"Device-to-circuit interactions in SiGe technology: Challenges and opportunities","authors":"J. Cressler","doi":"10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981283","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981283","url":null,"abstract":"The tight coupling between the nuanced physics of silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) and the circuits in which they are utilized in many ways represents the “final frontier” for research in technology optimization, device physics, compact modeling, circuit design, and system implementations. As relevant examples of the inherent complexities associated with such “device-to-circuit interactions” within the SiGe world, I examine two distinct scenarios: 1) Our ability to accurately predict the end-of-life reliability of actual SiGe HBT circuits; and 2) Our ability to mitigate transient radiation effects in SiGe HBT circuits. In each example, I address the scope of the problem, the challenges faced in trying to solve them, and the opportunities presented if and when that success comes.","PeriodicalId":423269,"journal":{"name":"2014 IEEE Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM)","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122611981","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A. Serhan, E. Lauga-Larroze, S. Bourdel, J. Fournier, N. Corrao
{"title":"Comparison between MOS and bipolar mm-wave power amplifiers in advanced SiGe technologies","authors":"A. Serhan, E. Lauga-Larroze, S. Bourdel, J. Fournier, N. Corrao","doi":"10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981305","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides a comparison between the performance of MOS and bipolar single stage power amplifiers (PA) in silicon germanium SiGe BiCMOS 55 nm technology from STMicroelectronics. The comparison is made in the same technology node and under similar design conditions (bias current, supply voltage, class of operation and silicon area). Moreover, slow wave coplanar waveguides (S-CPW) were used for matching network in order to reduce the impact of the passive components on the overall performances. Measurement results prove the superiority of bipolar PA in terms of power gain (8.2 dB against 5.5 dB for MOS), and power added efficiency (PAE) (16 % against 12 % for MOS). The output compression point (OCP1db) and saturation power (Psat) (7 dBm and 10 dBm respectively) are similar for both amplifiers. These results are clarified through a brief theoretical study. To our best knowledge, the presented bipolar PA has the highest figure of merit (FOM) when compared to the state of art of single stage, common source, class-A, 60 GHz power amplifiers.","PeriodicalId":423269,"journal":{"name":"2014 IEEE Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM)","volume":"105 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122658838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A broad-band BiCMOS transmitter front-end for 27–36GHz phased array systems","authors":"Y. Pei, Ying Chen, D. Leenaerts","doi":"10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981286","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981286","url":null,"abstract":"A 27-36 GHz wide-band phased array TX front-end is demonstrated in a 0.25um SiGe:C BiCMOS process. The TX front-end presents a saturation power more than 12.5dBm across 9GHz bandwidth. The front-end provides variable phase shift from 0°~360° with ~10° resolution, and the relative phase shift remains constant in the desired band. A 2-bit amplitude resolution is available for advanced beamforming algorithms. The wide-band PA can be applied in saturation mode and in linear mode due to its high linearity with an OIP3 over 21dBm.","PeriodicalId":423269,"journal":{"name":"2014 IEEE Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM)","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114146511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Pekarik, J. Adkisson, P. Gray, Q. Liu, R. Camillo-Castillo, M. Khater, V. Jain, B. Zetterlund, A. DiVergilio, X. Tian, A. Vallett, J. Ellis-Monaghan, B. J. Gross, P. Cheng, V. Kaushal, Z. He, J. Lukaitis, K. Newton, M. Kerbaugh, N. Cahoon, L. Vera, Y. Zhao, J. Long, A. Valdes-Garcia, S. Reynolds, W. Lee, B. Sadhu, D. Harame
{"title":"A 90nm SiGe BiCMOS technology for mm-wave and high-performance analog applications","authors":"J. Pekarik, J. Adkisson, P. Gray, Q. Liu, R. Camillo-Castillo, M. Khater, V. Jain, B. Zetterlund, A. DiVergilio, X. Tian, A. Vallett, J. Ellis-Monaghan, B. J. Gross, P. Cheng, V. Kaushal, Z. He, J. Lukaitis, K. Newton, M. Kerbaugh, N. Cahoon, L. Vera, Y. Zhao, J. Long, A. Valdes-Garcia, S. Reynolds, W. Lee, B. Sadhu, D. Harame","doi":"10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981293","url":null,"abstract":"We present the electrical characteristics of the first 90nm SiGe BiCMOS technology developed for production in IBM's large volume 200mm fabrication line. The technology features 300 GHz fT and 360 GHz fMAX high performance SiGe HBTs, 135 GHz fT and 2.5V BVCEO medium breakdown SiGe HBTs, 90nm Low Power RF CMOS, and a full suite of passive devices. A design kit supports custom and analog designs and a library of digital functions aids logic and memory design. The technology supports mm-wave and high-performance RF/Analog applications.","PeriodicalId":423269,"journal":{"name":"2014 IEEE Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM)","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116677566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
U. Zschieschang, R. Rodel, U. Kraft, K. Takimiya, T. Zaki, F. Letzkus, Jorg Butschke, H. Richter, J. Burghartz, Wei Xiong, B. Murmann, H. Klauk
{"title":"Low-voltage organic field-effect transistors for flexible electronics","authors":"U. Zschieschang, R. Rodel, U. Kraft, K. Takimiya, T. Zaki, F. Letzkus, Jorg Butschke, H. Richter, J. Burghartz, Wei Xiong, B. Murmann, H. Klauk","doi":"10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981295","url":null,"abstract":"A process for the fabrication of bottom-gate, top-contact (inverted staggered) organic thin-film transistors (TFTs) with channel lengths as short as 1 μm on flexible plastic substrates has been developed. The TFTs employ vacuum-deposited small-molecule semiconductors and a low-temperature-processed gate dielectric that is sufficiently thin to allow the TFTs to operate with voltages of about 3 V. The p-channel TFTs have an effective field-effect mobility of about 1 cm2/Vs, an on/off ratio of 107, and a signal propagation delay (measured in 11-stage ring oscillators) of 300 ns per stage. For the n-channel TFTs, an effective field-effect mobility of about 0.06 cm2/Vs, an on/off ratio of 106, and a signal propagation delay of 17 μs per stage have been obtained.","PeriodicalId":423269,"journal":{"name":"2014 IEEE Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM)","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123632255","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A power-efficient 4-element beamformer in 120-nm SiGe BiCMOS for 28-GHz cellular communications","authors":"Anirban Sarkar, Kevin Greene, B. Floyd","doi":"10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981287","url":null,"abstract":"A 4-element beamformer designed in 120-nm SiGe BiCMOS technology for 28-GHz mobile millimeter-wave broadband system is presented in this paper. Each element of the beamformer consists of a 4-bit active phase shifter and a two-stage Power Amplifier (PA). A two-stage PA design with a Class-C pre-driver and a 2nd-harmonic-tuned Class-AB driver stage is adopted for high gain and high efficiency at both peak and backed-off power levels. The active phase shifter employs in-phase/ quadrature phase current steering and digital control of transconductance (Gm). Measurement results show a 33-dB gain, 16.5-dBm saturated output power, 15.7-dBm oP1dB, 27.5% peak PAE and 8.2% 7-dB back-off PAE at 27 GHz for a single element. The minimum (maximum) RMS gain and phase errors across the 27-29 GHz band were 0.5 dB (3 dB) and 1.5°(12°). The beamformer also includes a 1:4 power splitter and a serial interface for digital control and occupies a die area of 5.32mm2.","PeriodicalId":423269,"journal":{"name":"2014 IEEE Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131221483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Integration challenges for high-performance carbon nanotube logic","authors":"J. Hannon, Hongsik Park, G. Tulevski, W. Haensch","doi":"10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981298","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981298","url":null,"abstract":"As the scaling of silicon-based devices becomes more challenging, alternative channel materials are being actively explored. One approach is to replace the silicon channel with nanoparticles - for example, carbon nanotubes - that offer higher performance and better scaling potential. However, the incorporation of nanoparticles requires the development of new “bottom up” fabrication techniques to grow or place particles at precise locations on a substrate. The inherent randomness of these assembly processes has an obvious impact on device yield, which must be taken into account in optimizing the layout of a device. Here we describe a simple statistical analysis of device yield that can give insight into the self-assembly process, and is particularly useful for characterizing nanoparticle self-assembly from solution.","PeriodicalId":423269,"journal":{"name":"2014 IEEE Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM)","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127366291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Tsay, M. Sapp, Michael Phamvu, T. Hall, Ryan Geries, Yan Li, Jerry Lopez, D. Lie
{"title":"A differential SiGe power amplifier using through-silicon-via and envelope-tracking for broadband wireless applications","authors":"J. Tsay, M. Sapp, Michael Phamvu, T. Hall, Ryan Geries, Yan Li, Jerry Lopez, D. Lie","doi":"10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981302","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, a differential SiGe power amplifier (PA) is designed using a bipolar differential pair in a 0.35-μm SiGe BiCMOS technology with through-silicon-via (TSV). Measured using continuous wave (CW) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) modulated waveforms, significant gain expansion (3-5 dB) is observed. The PA reaches power-added-efficiency (PAE) of 61.7% / 51.2% / 40.0% at Pout = 25.6 / 25.4 / 25.7 dBm at supply voltages of Vcc = 2.8V / 3.3V / 4.2V, respectively, with 800 MHz CW input. With the help of the envelope-tracking (ET) technique, the measured PAE improves by 7.3% / 10.4% / 15.4% compared to the fixed supply PA at power back-off regions at Pout = 19.9 / 22.1 / 22.4 dBm, achieving PAE of 38.4% / 43.4% / 38.6% at 800 MHz for LTE 16QAM 5 MHz and passing the LTE spectrum emission mask (SEM) without predistortion. This SiGe ET-PA shows promise for operation as the medium power (MP) PA for efficiency enhancement in the back-off regions.","PeriodicalId":423269,"journal":{"name":"2014 IEEE Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM)","volume":"05 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127399015","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A. Ulusoy, R. Schmid, S. Zeinolabedinzadeh, W. Khan, M. Kaynak, B. Tillack, J. Cressler
{"title":"An investigation of fT and fmax degradation due to device interconnects in 0.5 THz SiGe HBT technology","authors":"A. Ulusoy, R. Schmid, S. Zeinolabedinzadeh, W. Khan, M. Kaynak, B. Tillack, J. Cressler","doi":"10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981317","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981317","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, the authors investigate the impact of device interconnect parasitics on the two most commonly-accepted RF small-signal figures-of-merit, the transit frequency (fT) and the maximum frequency of oscillation (fmax) in state-of-the-art SiGe HBT technology. Simulations and measurement results are provided as a guideline to design an optimum device interconnect scheme to achieve a high fmax. Test structures were characterized with de-embedding structures providing reference planes at the device level and at the top-metal level. Measurements show an fmax of 450 GHz at the device level and at the top-metal level a degradation of only 4% to 430 GHz. These results demonstrate a significant advantage of the SiGe HBT technology compared to ultra-scaled CMOS technology at device speeds approaching a terahertz, and to the best of the authors' knowledge, demonstrate the highest fmax reported at the top-metal level in any state-of-the-art silicon technology.","PeriodicalId":423269,"journal":{"name":"2014 IEEE Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130948021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Z. Dong, Fei Lu, R. Ma, Li Wang, Chen Zhang, Gang Chen, Albert Z. H. Wang, B. Zhao
{"title":"An integrated transmitter for LED-based visible light communication and positioning system in a 180nm BCD technology","authors":"Z. Dong, Fei Lu, R. Ma, Li Wang, Chen Zhang, Gang Chen, Albert Z. H. Wang, B. Zhao","doi":"10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981291","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/BCTM.2014.6981291","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reports the first fully integrated transmitter designed in an 180nm BCD process for light-emitting diode (LED) based visible light communication (VLC) and positioning (VLP) systems. The transmitter consists of Manchester coder, precision voltage and current reference, multistage Cherry-Hooper amplifier, PLL, filter and LED driver. A feed-forward equalizer is used to boost the LED bandwidth for high data rate wireless streaming. Measurement shows that, driving commercial LED lighting devices, the transmitter can stream data over light at a speed of at least 12MHz.","PeriodicalId":423269,"journal":{"name":"2014 IEEE Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM)","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122438161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}