Voltage stress-induced hot carrier effects on SiGe HBT VCO

This paper presents the hot carrier (HC) induced performance degradation in a 10 GHz voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) with SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs). SiGe device characteristics due to HC stress are examined experimentally. The vertical bipolar inter-company (VBIC) model parameters extracted from measured data are used in Cadence SpectreRF simulation to verify the HC effect on the VCO. The VCO shows significant vulnerability to hot carriers.