On the potential of SiGeHBTs for extreme environment electronics

Extreme environments represents an important niche market for electronics and spans the operation of electronic components in surroundings lying outside the domain of conventional commercial, or even military, specifications. Such extreme environments would include, for instance, operation to very low temperatures (e.g.,, to 77 K or even 4.2 K), operation at very high temperatures (e.g., to 200 degrees C or even 300 degrees C), and operation in a radiation-rich environment (e.g., space). We argue that the unique bandgap-engineered features of silicon-germanium heterojunction bipolar transistors offer great potential to simultaneously satisfy all three extreme environment applications, potentially with little or no process modification, ultimately providing compelling cost advantages at the IC and system level.