Electromigration current limit of high speed SiGe bipolar transistors influenced by device self-heating

In this paper, an overview of the metal electromigration current limit of bipolar transistors is presented in which the device self-heating is taken into account, followed by related design considerations. In this evaluation, we use HBTs processed using IBM's 0.18 mum SiGe BiCMOS technology. This technology was selected to demonstrate the necessity of these studies to high-speed communication circuit designs.