Investigation of proton irradiation effects on InP/InGaAs double heterojunction bipolar transistors

•The irradiation effects on InP/InGaAs DHBTs are focused on low-energy proton.•The concentrations of vacancies caused by irradiation have been calculated.•Putting the vacancies models into Sentaurus, the effects on InP/InGaAs HBT can be understood.•The lower the proton energy, the greater the influence on the devices.

In this article, 3 MeV proton irradiation-induced degradation in InP/InGaAs double heterojunction bipolar transistors (DHBTs) is studied, the fluence up to 5 × 1012 protons/cm2, meanwhile 10 MeV proton irradiation is investigated in order to compare the differences induced by different proton energy irradiation. The devices exhibit good tolerance up to 5 × 1011 protons/cm2. The concentration of vacancies at different proton fluences can be calculated from SRIM. Being donor-like defects, the In and Ga vacancies act as compensation center while As vacancy acts as an acceptor-like defect. Adding the vacancies model into Sentaurus device simulator, simulation results match well with the trends of measured data.