ABSTRACT
Clearly, any new integrated circuit technology (SiGe or otherwise) must be proven to be ‘‘reliable.’’ That
is, under typical circuit-operating conditions, the circuits, and importantly, the systems constructed
from those circuits, must not wear-out or degrade to a level at which they fail ‘‘in the field’’ over the
functional life of the system. In integrated circuit circles, reliability of a given technology begins with
assurance of the reliability of the underlying building block devices — the transistors certainly, but also
the passive elements such as inductors or capacitors, and the interconnects linking the various elements.
In this chapter, we will focus only on the reliability of the transistors; in this case SiGe HBTs.
