Reduced Strain Silicon-Based Heterostructures for High Speed Electronic Devices
Abstract
The main overall goal of this project was to improve the high speed performance of transistors and integrated circuits based on silicon, which is the material on which most microelectronic circuitry (such as microprocessors and memory chips) is based. More specifically, we addressed the three-fold gap (150 GHz vs. 50 GHz top speeds) between the performance of heterojunction bipolar transistors made using silicon-germanium technology in isolated devices in research labs vs. that achieved in integrated circuits in production. We have shown that the incorporation of small amounts of carbon into the silicon-germanium can overcome one of the main problems which lead to the much lower performance of integrated devices vs. that of isolated laboratory devices. The carbon is effective because it greatly reduces the unwanted movement of atoms during the microfabrication process.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 31, 1998
- Accession Number
- ADA378013
Entities
People
- James C. Sturm
Organizations
- Princeton University