Design of SiGe HBT power amplifiers for microwave radar applications

A novel modification to the standard cascode amplifier architecture is presented in SiGe which allows for an optimal separation of gain and breakdown functions through the mixed breakdown cascade architecture, opening the door for moderate power amplifiers in SiGe. Utilizing this technique, a two-stage, high-gain amplifier operating at X-Band is fabricated and measured. The 20 dB of gain per stage represents the highest gain at X-Band at the time of publication. Additionally, a near one Watt power amplifier is designed and fabricated at X-Band, which represents the highest output power in SiGe at X-Band at time of publication. Related to the power amplifier design, thermal considerations are also investigated. The validity of utilizing lumped mutual thermal coupling in SiGe devices is presented. Using this finding, a thermal coupling model and network which are compliant for use with commonly available HBT models and circuit simulators is presented. This model and network is used to thermally optimize SiGe PA cells based upon layout spacing.Ph.D.Committee Member: John Cressler; Committee Member: John Papapolymerou; Committee Member: Joy Laskar; Committee Member: Thomas Morley; Committee Member: William Hun

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationPower generation in a nanoscale-gap thermophotovoltaic (nano-TPV) device can be enhanced, compared to conventional thermophotovoltaic (TPV) systems, due to radiative heat transfer exceeding the blackbody limit. TPV power generation refers to direct thermal-to-electrical energy conversion of near infrared and infrared radiation emitted by a terrestrial source. By separating the radiator and the cell by a gap smaller than the peak emitted wavelength, radiative heat transfer can exceed the blackbody predictions by a few orders of magnitude due to energy transport by waves evanescently confined to the surface of the radiator. This enhanced energy transfer can lead to a significant increase in TPV power generation. This dissertation is divided into two main parts. First, a numerical model is presented which demonstrates increased power generation in nano-TPV devices when compared to conventional TPV systems. The model incorporates near-field radiation, heat and charge transport while accounting for radiative, electrical and thermal losses in the cell. The devices analyzed consist of GaSb cells illuminated by a broadband tungsten and a quasi-monochromatic Drude emitter at 2000 K. Results show an increase in power generation by a factor of 4.7 with a tungsten emitter and a 100-nm-thick gap. Furthermore, it is shown that nano-TPV power generators may perform better with broadband emitters where radiative heat transfer is dominated by frustrated modes rather than surface modes. The second part of this dissertation is devoted to the experimental demonstration of radiative heat transfer exceeding the blackbody limit, which is the fundamental phenomenon underlying enhanced power generation in nano-TPV systems. A MEMS-based experimental device has been fabricated for radiative heat flux measurements between 5 5 mm2 planar intrinsic silicon surfaces separated by a variable gap as small as 150 nm. The separation gap is maintained via rigid spacers and a compliant membrane allows for variation of the gap size via mechanical forces. Results agree well with predictions based on fluctuational electrodynamics. At a gap size of 150 nm, the blackbody limit is exceeded by a factor of 8.4. This is the largest value ever recorded between macroscale planar surfaces at non-cryogenic temperatures

Silicon Doping Profile Measurement Using Terahertz Time Domain Spectroscopy

Doping profiles in silicon greatly determine electrical performances of microelectronic devices and are frequently engineered to manipulate device properties. To support engineering studies afterward, essential information is usually required for physically characterized doping profiles. Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), spreading resistance profiling (SRP) and electrochemical capacitance voltage (ECV) profiling are mainstream techniques for now to measure doping profiles destructively. SIMS produces a chemical doping profile through the ion sputtering process and owns a better characterization resolution. ECV and SPR, on the other hand, gauge an electrical doping profile from the free carrier detection in microelectronic devices. The major discrepancy between chemical and electrical profiles is at heavily doped (\u3e1020 atoms / cm3) regions. At the profile region over the solubility limit, inactive dopants induce a flat plateau and only being detected by electrical measurements. Destructive techniques are usually designed as stand-alone systems for the remote usage. For an in-situ process control purpose, non-contact approaches, such as non-contact capacitance-voltage (CV) and ellipsometry techniques, are currently under developing. In this dissertation, novel terahertz time domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) is adopted to achieve an electrical doping profile measurement in both destructive and non-contact manners. For this brand new application, everything has been studied from bottom-up. Firstly, the measurement uncertainty from the change of a bulk wafer thickness and the recognition of the doping profile dissimilarity were proven experimentally. The phosphorus refractive index from 1.2×1015 cm-3 to 1.8×1020 cm-3 levels was then generated physically for the modeling of the complex THz transmission and its shift to the Drude Model prediction is explained two scientific mechanisms. Through the experimental demonstrated of the proactical degeneracy, relative strategies were proposed to shrink or break it. The doping profile measurement was finally performed by both methods. We conclude that THz-TDS can be designed as either an either in-situ or stand-alone system to estimate a doping profile in semiconductor materials

DESIGN, COMPACT MODELING AND CHARACTERIZATION OF NANOSCALE DEVICES

Electronic device modeling is a crucial step in the advancement of modern nanotechnology and is gaining more and more interest. Nanoscale complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) transistors, being the backbone of the electronic industry, are pushed to below 10 nm dimensions using novel manufacturing techniques including extreme lithography. As their dimensions are pushed into such unprecedented limits, their behavior is still captured using models that are decades old. Among many other proposed nanoscale devices, silicon vacuum electron devices are regaining attention due to their presumed advantages in operating at very high power, high speed and under harsh environment, where CMOS cannot compete. Another type of devices that have the potential to complement CMOS transistors are nano-electromechanical systems (NEMS), with potential applications in filters, stable frequency sources, non-volatile memories and reconfigurable and neuromorphic electronics

Graphene thermal infrared emitters integrated into silicon photonic waveguides

Cost-efficient and easily integrable broadband mid-infrared (mid-IR) sources would significantly enhance the application space of photonic integrated circuits (PICs). Thermal incandescent sources are superior to other common mid-IR emitters based on semiconductor materials in terms of PIC compatibility, manufacturing costs, and bandwidth. Ideal thermal emitters would radiate directly into the desired modes of the PIC waveguides via near-field coupling and would be stable at very high temperatures. Graphene is a semi-metallic two-dimensional material with comparable emissivity to thin metallic thermal emitters. It allows maximum coupling into waveguides by placing it directly into their evanescent fields. Here, we demonstrate graphene mid-IR emitters integrated with photonic waveguides that couple directly into the fundamental mode of silicon waveguides designed for a wavelength of 4,2 {\mu}m relevant for CO${_2}$ sensing. High broadband emission intensity is observed at the waveguide-integrated graphene emitter. The emission at the output grating couplers confirms successful coupling into the waveguide mode. Thermal simulations predict emitter temperatures up to 1000{\deg}C, where the blackbody radiation covers the mid-IR region. A coupling efficiency {\eta}, defined as the light emitted into the waveguide divided by the total emission, of up to 68% is estimated, superior to data published for other waveguide-integrated emitters.Comment: 24 page

Study of a New Silicon Epitaxy Technique: Confined Lateral Selective Epitaxial Growth

This work describes a significant new advance in the technique of silicon selective epitaxy called Confined Lateral Selective Epitaxial Growth (CLSEG). CLSEG is a method for forming thin films of single crystal silicon on top of an insulating layer or film. Such thin films are generically termed Silicon-On- Insulator (SOI), and1 allow dielectric isolation of integrated circuit elements, making them more efficient (faster with lower power), more resistant to radiation, and smaller than conventional integrated circuits, ionizing radiation than conventional integrated circuits. CLSEG offers advantages over current methods of achieving SOI by being easily manufactured, inherently reproducible, and having greater design flexibility. CLSEG is also adaptable to vertical stacking of devices in a circuit, in what is called three-dimensional integration, for even greater reductions in area. In addition, CLSEG can be used for a wide variety of sensor and micromachining application. This thesis describes the design and development of CLSEG, and compares it to the current state of the art in the fields of SOI and Selective Epitaxial Growth (SEG). CLSEG is accomplished by growing silicon selective epitaxy within a cavity; which is formed of dielectric materials upon a silicon substrate. The resulting SOI film can be made as thin as 0.1 micron, and tens of microns wide, with an unlimited length. In particular, there is now strong evidence that surface diffusivity of silicon adatoms on the dielectric masking layers is a significant contributor to the transport of silicon to the growth surface during SE G. CLSEG silicon material quality is evaluated by fabricating a variety of semiconductor devices in CLSEG films. These devices demonstrate the applicability of CLSEG to integrated circuits, and provide a basis of comparison between CLSEG-grown silicon and device-quality substrate silicon. Then, CLSEG is used to fabricate an advanced device structure, verifying the value and significance of this new epitaxy technique. In the final two chapters, CLSEG is evaluated as a technology, and compared to the current state of the art. Then, a method is presented Tor forming CLSEG with only one photolithography step, and a process is described for making a SOI film across an entire silicon wafer using CLSEG. These techniques may indicate the feasibility of using CLSEG for three dimensional integration of microelectronics. It is hoped that this work will establish a firm basis for further study of this interesting and valuable new technology

Silicon based microcavity enhanced light emitting diodes

Realising Si-based electrically driven light emitters in a process technology compatible with mainstream microelectronics CMOS technology is key requirement for the implementation of low-cost Si-based optoelectronics and thus one of the big challenges of semiconductor technology. This work has focused on the development of microcavity enhanced silicon LEDs (MCLEDs), including their design, fabrication, and experimental as well as theoretical analysis. As a light emitting layer the abrupt pn-junction of a Si-diode was used, which was fabricated by ion implantation of boron into n-type silicon. Such forward biased pn-junctions exhibit room-temperature EL at a wavelength of 1138 nm with a reasonably high power efficiency of 0.1% [1]. Two MCLEDs emitting light at the resonant wavelength about 1150 nm were demonstrated: a) 1 MCLED with the resonator formed by 90 nm thin metallic CoSi2 mirror at the bottom and semitranparent distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) on the top; b) 5:5 MCLED with the resonator formed by high reflecting DBR at the bottom and semitransparent top DBR. Using the appoach of the 5:5 MCLED with two DBRs the extraction efficiency is enhanced by about 65% compared to the silicon bulk pn-junction diode.:List of Abbreviations and Symbols 1 Introduction and motivation 2 Theory 2.1 Electronic band structure of semiconductors 2.2 Light emitting diodes (LED) 2.2.1 History of LED 2.2.2 Mechanisms of light emission 2.2.3 Electrical properties of LED 2.2.4 LED e ciency 2.3 Si based light emitters 2.4 Microcavity enhanced light emitting pn-diode 2.4.1 Bragg reflectors 2.4.2 Fabry-Perot resonators 2.4.3 Optical mode density and emission enhancement in coplanar Fabry-Perot resonator 2.4.4 Design and optical properties of a Si microcavity LED 3 Preparation and characterisation methods 3.1 Preparation techniques 3.1.1 Thermal oxidation of silicon 3.1.2 Photolithography 3.1.3 Wet chemical cleaning and etching 3.1.4 Ion implantation 3.1.5 Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition (PECVD) of silicon nitride 3.1.6 Magnetron sputter deposition 3.2 Characterization techniques 3.2.1 Variable Angle Spectroscopic Ellipsometry (VASE) 3.2.2 Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) 3.2.3 Microscopy 3.2.4 Electroluminescence and photoluminescence measurements 4 Experiments, results and discussion 4.1 Used substrates 4.1.1 Silicon substrates 4.1.2 Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) substrates 4.2 Fabrication and characterization of distributed Bragg reflectors 4.2.1 Deposition and characterization of SiO2 4.2.2 Deposition of Si 4.2.3 Distributed Bragg Reflectors (DBR) 4.2.4 Conclusions 4.3 Design of Si pn-junction LED 4.4 Resonant microcavity LED with CoSi2 bottom mirror 4.4.1 Device preparation 4.4.2 Electrical Si diode characteristics 4.4.3 EL spectra 4.4.4 Conclusions 4.5 Si based microcavity LED with two DBRs 4.5.1 Test device 4.5.2 Device fabrication 4.5.3 LED on SOI versus MCLED 4.5.4 Conclusions 5 Summary and outlook 5.1 Summary 5.2 Outlook A Appendix A.1 The parametrization of optical constants A.1.1 Kramers-Kronig relations A.1.2 Forouhi-Bloomer dispersion formula A.1.3 Tauc-Lorentz dispersion formula A.1.4 Sellmeier dispersion formula A.2 Wafer holder List of publications Acknowledgements Declaration / Versicherun

Silicon Germanium BiCMOS Integrated Circuits for Scalable Cryogenic Sensing Applications

This dissertation is focused on an investigation of BiCMOS cryogenic low noise amplifiers (LNAs) based on Silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) for simultaneous low noise and low power design and also taking advantage of CMOS circuitry for adding flexibility to the LNA design. Cryogenic LNAs\u27 scalability challenges are discussed and addressed in the dissertation. To achieve that, first, HBTs of three state-of-the-art technologies are characterized and modeled at cryogenic temperature. It is shown that SiGe HBT provides a promising compromise of noise temperature, power consumption, and bandwidth. Moreover, a scalable on-chip approach is proposed and verified for biasing of SiGe HBTs based LNAs. Finally, the first cryogenic re-configurable LNA is designed, implemented, and measured

Nanogap Device: Fabrication and Applications

A nanogap device as a platform for nanoscale electronic devices is presented. Integrated nanostructures on the platform have been used to functionalize the nanogap for biosensor and molecular electronics. Nanogap devices have great potential as a tool for investigating physical phenomena at the nanoscale in nanotechnology. In this dissertation, a laterally self-aligned nanogap device is presented and its feasibility is demonstrated with a nano ZnO dot light emitting diode (LED) and the growth of a metallic sharp tip forming a subnanometer gap suitable for single molecule attachment. For realizing a nanoscale device, a resolution of patterning is critical, and many studies have been performed to overcome this limitation. The creation of a sub nanoscale device is still a challenge. To surmount the challenge, novel processes including double layer etch mask and crystallographic axis alignment have been developed. The processes provide an effective way for making a suspended nanogap device consisting of two self-aligned sharp tips with conventional lithography and 3-D micromachining using anisotropic wet chemical Si etching. As conventional lithography is employed, the nanogap device is fabricated in a wafer scale and the processes assure the productivity and the repeatability. The anisotropic Si etching determines a final size of the nanogap, which is independent of the critical dimension of the lithography used. A nanoscale light emitting device is investigated. A nano ZnO dot is directly integrated on a silicon nanogap device by Zn thermal oxidation followed by Ni and Zn blanket evaporation instead of complex and time consuming processes for integrating nanostructure. The electrical properties of the fabricated LED device are analyzed for its current-voltage characteristic and metal-semiconductor-metal model. Furthermore, the electroluminescence spectrum of the emitted light is measured with a monochromator implemented with a CCD camera to understand the optical properties. The atomically sharp metallic tips are grown by metal ion migration induced by high electric field across a nanogap. To investigate the growth mechanism, in-situ TEM is conducted and the growing is monitored. The grown dendrite nanostructures show less than 1nm curvature of radius. These nanostructures may be compatible for studying the electrical properties of single molecule

Purcell enhancement of silicon W centers in circular Bragg grating cavities

Generating single photons on demand in silicon is a challenge to the scalability of silicon-on-insulator integrated quantum photonic chips. While several defects acting as artificial atoms have recently demonstrated an ability to generate antibunched single photons, practical applications require tailoring of their emission through quantum cavity effects. In this work, we perform cavity quantum electrodynamics experiments with ensembles of artificial atoms embedded in silicon-on-insulator microresonators. The emitters under study, known as W color centers, are silicon tri-interstitial defects created upon self-ion implantation and thermal annealing. The resonators consist of circular Bragg grating cavities, designed for moderate Purcell enhancement ($F_p=12.5$) and efficient luminescence extraction ($\eta_{coll}=40\%$ for a numerical aperture of 0.26) for W centers located at the mode antinode. When the resonant frequency mode of the cavity is tuned with the zero-phonon transition of the emitters at 1218 nm, we observe a 20-fold enhancement of the zero-phonon line intensity, together with a two-fold decrease of the total relaxation time in time-resolved photoluminescence experiments. Based on finite-difference time-domain simulations, we propose a detailed theoretical analysis of Purcell enhancement for an ensemble of W centers, considering the overlap between the emitters and the resonant cavity mode. We obtain a good agreement with our experimental results assuming a quantum efficiency of $65 \pm 10 \%$ for the emitters in bulk silicon. Therefore, W centers open promising perspectives for the development of on-demand sources of single photons, harnessing cavity quantum electrodynamics in silicon photonic chips