On the modeling of polysilicon emitter bipolar transistors

In this paper, an attempt is made to derive a general analytical formulation for the current gain and emitter transit time of a polysilicon emitter bipolar transistor (BJT), which includes all previous models as particular cases. Firstly, it is shown that the minority-carrier injection and storage in the polysilicon region can be simply described by effective values of the minority-carrier diffusion length and mobility. These quantities are precisely defined, and depend on the microscopic transport properties of polysilicon grains and grain boundaries. Secondly, a general expression for the effective recombination velocity relative to the poly/mono interface is derived, which includes, and in some cases extends, all previous approaches. This results in a simple and general formulation which avoids some unnecessary simplification present in nearly all previous treatments, and allows easy comparison of the different models for the poly/mono interface and a clear assessment of the relevance of each physical mechanism. Finally, minority-carrier injection and storage in the single-crystal region is addressed. The effect of oxide breakup on both current gain and emitter transit time is also considered, and different models are compared.