Role of annealing in constant period of voltage stress on the burn-in effect suppression of InGaP/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors

Rapid thermal annealing (RTA) is proved to be more efficient in dissociating hydrogen complexes than using a constant period of voltage stress (CPVS). Without waiting for the bond breaking of complexes by minority carrier injection, RTA favors the critical base-emitter voltage (V-BE) responsible for the occurrence of burn-in (BI) from 1.75 to 1.4 V and thus assists CPVS in reducing V-BE by about 25% used in BI suppression. Besides eliminating the BI, the sample first prepared by RTA and followed by CPVS has larger base and collector current densities at V-BE > 1. 1 V and reaches 6 times those at V-BE > 1. 3 V compared with the sample only using by CPVS.