Proton irradiation effects on InGaP/GaAs single heterojunction bipolar transistors

•The irradiation effects on InGaP/GaAs SHBTs are focused on low-energy proton.•To analyze the irradiation-induced damage, the ideality factor of IBE is extracted.•The degradation of fT after irradiation at a fixed bias is presented theoretically.•The open-collector technique is used to extract the access resistances.•The lower the proton energy, the greater the influence on the devices.

The irradiation effects of low energy proton on both Direct Current (DC) and the Radio Frequency (RF) performance of InGaP/GaAs single heterojunction bipolar transistors (SHBTs) are investigated with fluence up to 5 × 1012 protons/cm2. The current gain in RF and the cutoff frequency (fT) show a little degradation even at proton fluence of 5 × 1012/cm2. The open-collector technique is used to extract the access resistances. Meanwhile 10 MeV proton irradiation is also investigated in order to compare the differences induced by different proton energies. The results indicate that InGaP/GaAs HBT is tolerant to proton irradiation.