ABSTRACT

This chapter provides a basic understanding of how Silicon-germanium (SiGe) devices achieve a performance advantage over traditional bipolar and complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) devices. It reviews SiGe bipolar complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (BiCMOS) technology and its most significant applications. The chapter discusses Radio frequency performance metrics for SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) devices and discusses how the devices can be optimized to maximize these performance metrics. It also reviews historical application drivers for SiGe technology and projects a roadmap of SiGe applications well into the future. However, new high-frequency and high-datarate applications are driving SiGe performance advancements. Millimeter-wave communications systems offer an excellent opportunity for the use of SiGe HBT devices. In addition to wireless transceivers, high-speed fiber-optic and copper wire transceivers also provide a good application for SiGe transistors. This market can be divided by datarate, with the higher datarates requiring more advanced SiGe BiCMOS devices.