Role of Annealing in Constant Period of Voltage Stress on the Burn-in Effect Suppression of InGaP/GaAs Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors

Abstract

Rapid thermal annealing (RTA) is proved to be more efficient in dissociating hydrogen complexes than using a constant period of voltage stress (CPVS). Without waiting for the bond breaking of complexes by minority carrier injection, RTA favors the critical base–emitter voltage (VBE) responsible for the occurrence of burn-in (BI) from 1.75 to 1.4 V and thus assists CPVS in reducing VBE by about 25% used in BI suppression. Besides eliminating the BI, the sample first prepared by RTA and followed by CPVS has larger base and collector current densities at VBE>1.1 V and reaches 6 times those at VBE>1.3 V compared with the sample only using by CPVS.