Silicon-germanium process technology

Recently, silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) technology has emerged as a way to extend the performance of silicon-based bipolar technology into a new regime to compete with Gallium Arsenide bipolar and MESFET technologies in performance, at the same time having the process control and economy of scale of running in, a silicon CMOS fabricator. We have developed and put into production such a process technology for use in 1-20 GHz range for high-speed wired and wireless, analog, mixed-signal, and digital applications. This paper describes the BICMOS manufacturing process and the process/device traddeoffs involved in developing the technology.