On the RF Properties of Weakly Saturated SiGe HBTs and Their Potential Use in Ultralow-Voltage Circuits

Abstract

We investigate, for the first time, the feasibility of operating silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) in a weakly saturated bias regime to enable ultralow-voltage RF front-end design. Measured dc, ac, and RF characteristics of third-generation high-performance SiGe HBTs operating in weak saturation are presented. Robust RF operation of 0.12 × 6.0 μm 2 SiGe HBTs are demonstrated in a common-emitter configuration at collector-to-emitter voltages above 0.15 V. A noise figure of 1.33 dB and an input third-order intercept point above −8 dBm for a 3-GHz input tone are achieved at 0.30 V. These results have potential implications for RF circuits used in severely power-constrained systems.

Uniform bipolar resistive switching properties with self-compliance effect of Pt/TiO2/p-Si devices

“…[16][17][18] On the other hand, several key issues of resistive switching, such as uniformity and reliability, also hinder the commercialization of RRAM. Numerous efforts have been devoted to design memory devices with self-compliance effect 16,19,20 and address the uniformity issue of RRAM devices. 21, 22 Wang, et al reported that self-compliance effect can be achieved by changing the deposition technique and annealing conditions to create an unbreakable resistance in the devices.…”

A 1.0 V, 10–22 GHz, 4 mW LNA Utilizing Weakly Saturated SiGe HBTs for Single-Chip, Low-Power, Remote Sensing Applications

“…A lower device-level gain, at an exponentially lower current consumption and supply voltage, can be compensated by the use of a multi-stage design topology, which if optimized for power, can result in significantly lower total power consumption at a constant total gain and noise performance. However, this lower power consumption comes at the cost of degradation in linearity due to the physical properties of the saturated SiGe HBT [3] and the multi-stage design topology. Furthermore, due to the sharp drop-off in gain with increased , as seen in Fig.…”

“…Weakly-saturated SiGe HBTs have been shown to demonstrate decreased but still acceptable levels of power gain, along with good noise performance and favorable characteristics under low-temperature operation [3].…”

Resistive switching behavior of a thin amorphous rare-earth scandate: Effects of oxygen content

“…Al 2 O 3 , 17 TiO 2 , 18 NiO, 19 and Ta 2 O 5 (Ref. 20) are some examples for this category of films. In the present work, an amorphous HoScO 3 (HSO) is selected because it is one of the rare-earth based oxides having good thermal stability without crystallization up to 1050 C. 21 This type of oxides is considered as the next generation dielectrics.…”