GaAs HBTs are greatly affected by the unintentional introduction of defects in certain key parts of their structure. These process sensitive parts of the HBT structure need to be understood and controlled by process engineers. HBT operation, testing and performance characterisation supply the basic information that materials, processing and device engineers need to solve and understand the often complex material and process interactions. Reliability characterisation is an equally important guide for HBT engineers to the extent that such information is available. Many HBT process choices are available and some of the main ones were reviewed in this chapter. As in most facets of engineering, knowledge and information are a starting point for a job that needs to be done better than is now possible.

Inspec keywords: heterojunction bipolar transistors; gallium arsenide; III-V semiconductors; semiconductor device reliability

Other keywords: heterojunction bipolar transistors; HBT engineers; device engineers; GaAs; reliability characterisation

Subjects: Bipolar transistors