Minority carrier lifetime degradation in carbon-doped base of InGaP/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors grown by low-pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition

The effect of intermediate temperature annealing on the carbon-doped base region of InGaP/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) was studied. This work shows that the minority carrier lifetime in the samples doped at 5.5×10¹⁹ cm^-3 decreases upon annealing at only 600 °C. Magnetotransport measurements were performed to obtain the minority carrier mobility, with which the minority carrier lifetime was extracted. The decrease in the direct current (dc) current gain upon annealing is attributed to the increase in the base bulk recombination. The correlation between the dc current gain and the magnetotransport measurements indicates that the annealing increases the carbon-related defects in the GaAs base, decreases the minority carrier lifetime in the carbon-doped base, and degrades the dc current gain of the InGaP/GaAs HBTs. These results are very important to the growth and postgrowth processing of InGaP/GaAs HBTs. © 2000 American Institute of Physics.