Horizontal current bipolar transistors with improved breakdown voltages
09842834 ยท 2017-12-12
Inventors
Cpc classification
H10D62/109
ELECTRICITY
H10D62/127
ELECTRICITY
International classification
H01L27/06
ELECTRICITY
Abstract
A horizontal current bipolar transistor comprises a substrate of first conductivity type, defining a wafer plane parallel to said substrate; a collector drift region above said substrate, having a second, opposite conductivity type, forming a first metallurgical pn-junction with said substrate; a collector contact region having second conductivity type above said substrate and adjacent to said collector drift region; a base region comprising a sidewall at an acute angle to said wafer plane, having first conductivity type, and forming a second metallurgical pn-junction with said collector drift region; and a buried region having first conductivity type between said substrate and said collector drift region forming a third metallurgical pn-junction with the collector drift region. An intercept between an isometric projection of said base region on said wafer plane and an isometric projection of said buried region on said wafer plane is smaller than said isometric projection of said base region.
Claims
1. A horizontal current bipolar transistor comprising: a substrate having a first conductivity type and defining a wafer plane parallel to said substrate; an n-hill layer disposed on top of said substrate, having a second conductivity type opposite to said first conductivity type, and forming a first metallurgical pn-junction with said substrate; a n+ diffusion layer having second conductivity type disposed on top of said substrate and adjacent to said n-hill layer; a base layer comprising an extrinsic base layer, an intrinsic base layer, and a sidewall inclined at an acute angle to said wafer plane, having first conductivity type, and forming a second metallurgical pn-j unction with said n-hill layer; a buried local pwell substrate having first conductivity type disposed between said substrate and said n-hill layer forming a third metallurgical pn-junction with the n-hill layer; wherein a first intercept between an isometric projection of said base layer on said wafer plane and an isometric projection of said buried local pwell substrate on said wafer plane is smaller than said isometric projection of said base layer.
2. The horizontal current bipolar transistor of claim 1, wherein a second intercept between an isometric projection of said n+ diffusion layer on said wafer plane and an isometric projection of said buried local pwell substrate-on wafer plane is smaller than said isometric projection of said n+ diffusion layer.
3. The horizontal current bipolar transistor of claim 1, wherein at least one CMOS pwell layer of first conductivity type is disposed within said substrate and at least one MOS type transistor is disposed within said CMOS pwell layer.
4. The horizontal current bipolar transistor of claim 3, wherein said buried local pwell substrate and said CMOS pwell layer exhibit substantially equal impurity dopant distribution decay towards the substrate.
5. The horizontal current bipolar transistor of claim 1, further described as having a collector-emitter breakdown voltage, wherein for at least one value of collector-emitter voltage smaller than said collector-emitter breakdown voltage, a depletion region extends at least from said second metallurgical pn-junction to said third metallurgical pn-junction.
6. The horizontal current bipolar transistor of claim 1, further described as having a collector-emitter breakdown voltage, wherein for at least one value of collector-emitter voltage smaller than said collector-emitter breakdown voltage, a depletion region extends at least from said first metallurgical pn-junction to said second metallurgical pn-junction.
7. A horizontal current bipolar transistor comprising, a substrate having a first conductivity type and defining a wafer plane parallel to said substrate; an n-hill layer disposed on top of said substrate, having a second conductivity type opposite to said first conductivity type, forming a first metallurgical pn-j unction with said substrate; and surrounded by isolating oxide layer; at least one n+ diffusion layer having second conductivity type disposed on top of said substrate and adjacent to said n-hill layer; an intrinsic base layer disposed on top of said n-hill layer and comprising a portion of at least one of two opposing sidewalls inclined at an acute angle to said wafer plane, having first conductivity type, and forming a second metallurgical pn-junction with said n-hill layer; an extrinsic base layer disposed on top of the n-hill layer, having first conductivity type and forming a third metallurgical pn-junction with said n-hill layer and metallurgical p.sup.+p junction with said intrinsic base layer; a buried local pwell substrate having first conductivity type disposed between said substrate and said n-hill layer forming a fourth metallurgical pn-junction with said n-hill layer; wherein a first intercept between an isometric projection of said intrinsic base layer on said wafer plane and an isometric projection of said buried local pwell substrate on said wafer plane is smaller than said isometric projection of said intrinsic base layer; wherein isometric projection of said extrinsic base layer on said wafer plane not intercepted with isometric projection of said intrinsic base layer on said wafer plane consists of at least one polygon having finite area larger than zero.
8. The horizontal current bipolar transistor of claim 7, wherein a second intercept between an isometric projection of said n+ diffusion layer on said wafer plane and an isometric projection of said buried local pwell substrate on wafer plane is smaller than said isometric projection of said n+ diffusion layer.
9. The horizontal current bipolar transistor of claim 7, wherein at least one CMOS pwell layer of first conductivity type is disposed within said substrate and at least one MOS type transistor is disposed within said CMOS pwell layer.
10. The horizontal current bipolar transistor of claim 9, wherein said buried local pwell substrate and said CMOS pwell layer exhibit substantially equal impurity dopant distribution decay towards the substrate.
11. The horizontal current bipolar transistor of claim 7, further described as having a collector-emitter breakdown voltage, wherein for at least one value of collector-emitter voltage smaller than said collector-emitter breakdown voltage, a depletion region extends at least from said third metallurgical pn-junction to said fourth metallurgical pn-junction.
12. The horizontal current bipolar transistor of claim 7, further described as having a collector-emitter breakdown voltage, wherein for at least one value of collector-emitter voltage smaller than said collector-emitter breakdown voltage, a depletion region extends at least from said first metallurgical pn-junction to said second metallurgical pn-junction.
13. The horizontal current bipolar transistor of claim 7, further described as having a collector-emitter breakdown voltage, wherein for at least one value of collector-emitter voltage smaller than said collector-emitter breakdown voltage, a depletion region extends at least from said first metallurgical pn-junction to said third metallurgical pn-junction.
14. The horizontal current bipolar transistor of claim 7, further described as having a collector-emitter breakdown voltage, wherein for at least one value of collector-emitter voltage smaller than said collector-emitter breakdown voltage, a depletion region extends at least from said fourth metallurgical pn-junction to said wafer plane.
15. The horizontal current bipolar transistor of claim 7, further described as having a collector-emitter breakdown voltage, wherein for at least one value of collector-emitter voltage smaller than said collector-emitter breakdown voltage, a depletion region extends at least from said first metallurgical pn-junction to said wafer plane.
Description
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES
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DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
(18) HV HCBT is based on the double-emitter HCBT structure. Increase in the collector-emitter breakdown voltage with open base (BV.sub.CEO) is achieved by merging collectors of two HS HCBT transistors with opposite orientation of the intrinsic transistors. This geometry allows full depletion of the intrinsic collector in forward active region resulting in the increase of BV.sub.CEO to the value close to collector-base breakdown voltage with open emitter (BV.sub.CBO).
(19) This invention presents the new structure and method for fabrication of HCBT devices with high breakdown voltage by utilizing the substrate-collector junction field to achieve full depletion of the collector region. This principle is similar to the one used in REduced SURface Field (RESURF) devices [6]. Electric field is not necessarily reduced at the surface but at the plane where electric charges are geometrically limited. In general, charge can be limited by isolation material such as in [6, 7] or by opposing pn-junction such as in [5]. If electric charge of one side of the pn-junction is limited geometrically, maximum electric field at the junction is limited by the total amount of charge on that side. Maximum is reached when full depletion of this side of junction occurs.
(20) One way of increasing the BV.sub.CEO of bipolar transistor is to apply aforementioned effect to limit the electric field at the intrinsic base-collector junction below critical value for avalanche multiplication. Therefore, intrinsic collector has to be fully depleted before field at the junction reaches the critical value. Once intrinsic collector is fully depleted, field at the junction remains roughly constant. When electrons (in case of npn transistor) pass through the base-collector junction, direction of the electric field forces them to flow through the drift region, i.e. the region with reduced electric field. In case of DE HCBT the intrinsic collector is surrounded by the base region, which is the most important for full depletion of collector [5]. In case of the proposed HCBT structures, local substrate with increased doping concentration is placed near the intrinsic transistor. In this way collector charge is limited and the full depletion of collector region accomplished when transistor is operated in forward active region.
(21) This principle can be applied on both single emitter (SE) and double-emitter (DE) HCBTs. Collector charge is limited in different part of collector for two structures, yielding different values of BV.sub.CEO. In case of SE HCBT, substrate-collector junction is used to deplete intrinsic collector in order to limit the electric field at the intrinsic base-collector junction. A drift region which sustains collector voltage is formed toward the extrinsic collector. In case of DE HCBT it is used to deplete portion of extrinsic collector in order to limit the peak electric field in the drift region of DE HCBT, which is responsible for transistor breakdown. The second drift region is formed, which sustains collector voltage increasing the BV.sub.CEO.
(22) HCBT is fabricated in bulk silicon p-type wafers with the acceptor concentration around 10.sup.15 cm.sup.3. With this doping concentration in the substrate it is difficult to deplete collector which has the concentration on the order of 10.sup.17 cm.sup.3. In order to have efficient depletion action from the substrate, it should have the concentration on the same order of magnitude as in the collector or higher. CMOS pwell has a suitable concentration and can be used to form the local substrate region, which can be used to introduce collector charge sharing. Moreover, since HCBT is integrated with CMOS this process module is already available resulting in no additional costs.
I. The First Embodiment
(23) In the first embodiment, the local pwell substrate-collector junction 18 is used to change the electric field distribution of the SE HCBT. Cross-section of the SE HCBT with local substrate is shown in
(24) Lithography masks important for the SE HCBT and high-voltage (HV) SE HCBT fabrication are shown in
(25) In the forward active region, the collector is connected to a higher potential than the base and the substrate is connected to the lowest potential. Both the base-collector and the collector-substrate junctions are reversely polarized and associated depletion regions spread on the intrinsic collector side. A portion of n-hill layer 5 positioned between intrinsic base 8 and local pwell substrate 4A and below the extrinsic base 7 acts as an intrinsic collector. Once the intrinsic collector is fully depleted, penetration of the collector electric field toward intrinsic base is blocked by the extrinsic base from the top and the local pwell substrate from the bottom. As a result, a voltage drop across the intrinsic base-collector junction is limited as well as the maximum electric field. It also results in the suppression of the basewidth modulation by the collector voltage.
(26) In the DE HCBT whose mask is shown in
(27) Electrical Characteristics
(28) Gummel characteristics of the HV SE HCBT are shown in
(29) Measured common emitter output characteristics of the HV SE HCBT are shown in
(30) TABLE-US-00001 TABLE I MEASURED ELECTRICAL PARAMETERS OF HIGH VOLTAGE SINGLE-EMITTER (HV SE) HCBT AND HIGH SPEED (HS) HCBT HV SE HCBT HS HCBT .sub.max 133 151 V.sub.A, (V) 105 10.6 (V.sub.CE = 4~5 V) BV.sub.CEO (V) 10.5 3.95 (forced V.sub.BE) f.sub.T (GHz) 15.8 35.7 f.sub.max (GHz) 32.7 61 f.sub.TBV.sub.CEO(GHzV) 166 141 .Math. V.sub.A, (kV), 13.97 1.6
II. The Second Embodiment
(31) In the second embodiment local pwell substrate-collector junction 18 is used to change the electric field distribution of the DE HCBT.
(32) Intrinsic part of the proposed structure is the same as in standard DE HCBT and is shown in
(33) In the second embodiment presented here, the local pwell substrate-collector junction 18 is used to deplete top portion of the n-hill in order to limit the electric field which is formed in the drift region DR1 of DE HCBT. At the same time, the peak electric field at the curvature of the extrinsic base-collector junction near the top surface which is responsible for the BV.sub.CBO is limited as well. This is done in a similar manner as in RESURF devices and we will call this device DE HCBT with RESURF region.
(34) Cross-sections at the symmetry lines of the DE HCBT with RESURF region are shown in
(35) In normal operation substrate is connected to the ground potential. By increasing the collector voltage, junction between local pwell substrate 4A and n-hill 5 is reversely polarized. The basic idea is that the n-hill above the local pwell substrate is fully depleted if collector voltage is increased and that the second drift region DR2 (
(36) The change of the electric field with the increase of the collector-emitter voltage (V.sub.SE) is shown in
Electrical Characteristics
(37) Gummel characteristics of the transistor with the length of local pwell substrate (i.e. DR 2 from
(38) TABLE-US-00002 TABLE II MEASURED ELECTRICAL PARAMETERS OF DOUBLE-EMITTER (DE) HCBT WITH RESURF R REGION FOR N-HILL WIDTH OF 0.36 m AND DIFFERENT LENGTH d.sub.pw. Emitter area (m.sup.2) l.sub.pw = 0.5 m l.sub.pw = 3 m .sub.max 123 129 V.sub.A, (V), (I.sub.B = 15 nA) 1928 2233 (V.sub.CE = 6~7 V) (V.sub.CE = 6~7 V) BV.sub.CEO (V), output 26 36 BV.sub.CS (V) 33 36 f.sub.T (GHz) 5.26 2.68 f.sub.max (GHz) 10.55 4.55 f.sub.TBV.sub.CEO(GHzV) 137 164 .Math. V.sub.A, (kV), 2.37 2.88
(39) In case of transistor with l.sub.pw=0.5 m classical BV.sub.CEO occurs between collector and emitter and in the case of transistor with l.sub.pw=3 m, the breakdown occurs between local pwell substrate and n-hill and basically transistors' BV.sub.CEO which involves positive feedback due to transistor current gain is not observed. This means that neither the 2.sup.nd nor the 3.sup.rd peak from
DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS
(40) 1: Silicon substrate 2: Shallow trench isolation (device isolating oxide film) 3: CMOS nwell 4A: Local pwell substrate 4B: CMOS pwell layer 5: n-hill layer 6: CMOS gate polysilicon 7: Extrinsic base layer 8: Intrinsic base layer 9: Emitter polysilicon 10: Emitter diffusion layer 11: Sidewall spacer 12: n+ diffusion layer 13: p+ diffusion layer 14: Silicide 15A: Emitter contact 15B: Base contact 15C: Collector contact 15D: Substrate contact 16: First metallurgical pn junction 17: Second metallurgical pn junction 18: Third metallurgical pn junction 101: CMOS active mask 102: n-hill mask 103: CMOS pwell-block mask 104: Base mask 105: Oxide etching mask 106: CMOS n+ collector mask
REFERENCES
(41) [1] T. Suligoj et al, U.S. Pat. No. 7,038,249, 2006 [2] T. Suligoj, P. Biljanovic, J. K. O. Sin, K. L. Wang. A New HCBT with a Partially Etched Collector, IEEE Electron Dev. Letters, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp. 200-202, March 2005 [3] T. Suligoj et al, U.S. Pat. No. 8,569,866, 2013 Hybrid-integrated lateral bipolar transistor and CMOS transistor and method for manufacturing the same [4] T. Suligoj, M. Kori{hacek over (c)}i, H. Mochizuki, S. Morita, K. Shinomura, and H. Imai, Horizontal Current Bipolar Transistor (HCBT) with a Single Polysilicon Region for Improved High-Frequency Performance of BiCMOS ICs, IEEE Electron Device Lett., vol. 31, no. 6, pp. 534-536, June 2010. [5] M. Kori{hacek over (c)}i, T. Suligoj, H. Mochizuki, S. Morita, K. Shinomura, and H. Imai, Double-Emitter HCBT StructureA High-Voltage Bipolar Transistor for BiCMOS Integration,, IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, vol. 59, no. 12 pp. 3647-3650, December 2012. [6] J. A. Appels, and H. M. J Vaes, High Voltage Thin Layer Devices (RESURF Devices), in IEDM Tech. Dig., 1979, pp. 238-241. [7] J. Cai, M. Kumar, M. Steigenvalt, H. Ho, K. Schonenberg, K. Stein, H. Chen, K. Jenkins, Q. Ouyang, P. Oldiges, and T. Ning, Vertical SiGe-Base Bipolar Transistors on CMOS-Compatible SOI Substrate, BCTM 2003, pp. 215-218.