The damage effect and mechanism of the bipolar transistor induced by the intense electromagnetic pulse

A study of the internal damage process and mechanism of the typical n(+)-p-n-n(+) structure bipolar transistor induced by the intense electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is carried out in this paper from the variation analysis of the distribution of the electric field, the current density and the temperature. Research shows that the damage position of the bipolar transistor is different with the different magnitude of the injecting voltage, when the magnitude of the injecting voltage is low the damage will appear firstly near the collector region under the center of the emitter region, and when the magnitude of the injecting voltage is sufficiently high the damage will appear firstly at the edge of the base near the emitter due to the breakdown of the PIN structure composed of the base-epitaxial layer-collector. Adopting the data analysis software, the relation equation between the device damage power P and the pulse width T under different injecting voltage is obtained. Owing to the variety of the device damage energy, it is demonstrated that the empirical formulas of the intense electromagnetic pulse P = AT(-1) (A is a constant) is modified to P = AT(-1.4) for the bipolar transistor.