History and future perspective of the modern silicon bipolar transistor

Abstract

A brief historical account of the development of advanced silicon bipolar transistors (SBTs) at IBM Research is described, with a focus on discussing the technical merits of the directions taken. A perspective on the future of silicon bipolar is given, including a discussion on the merits of SiGe-base transistors, and on the scaling limits of both Si-base and SiGe-base transistors. An apples-to-apples comparison of SiGe-base transistors and GaAs HBTs is made, showing that GaAs HBTs are inherently faster and more scaleable than SiGe-base transistors.