Characterization of InP/InGaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors with carbon-doped base layers grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition and molecular beam epitaxy

We characterized InP/InGaAs heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) with carbon-doped InGaAs base layers grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Since HBTs grown using these techniques require different processing steps, resulting in different types of process-related damage, we analyzed the bulk and periphery components of DC characteristics to clarify the effects of the crystal growth and process techniques on device characteristics separately. The MBE-grown HBTs were found to have an advantage over the MOCVD-grown HBTs, because they do not require harmful high-temperature annealing during processing steps. On the other hand, it was also shown that the MOCVD-grown HBTs have a significantly lower base recombination rate than the MBE-grown HBTs, making MOCVD a suitable method of growing InP HBTs that do not require annealing, such as that with a GaAsSb base.