Europeans Collaborate on Bipolar and BiCMOS
1. This single-chip television receiver uses 0.5 µí BiCMOS technology. (Source: Philips Semiconductors)
Staff -- Semiconductor International, 7/1/1998
Europeans Collaborate on Bipolar and BiCMOS
Bipolar and
BiCMOS technologies offer a number of advantages over other semiconductor fabrication
processes (such as pure CMOS) for some important sectors of the electronics equipment
market. The ESPRIT project "Technology Initiative in BiCMOS Applications"
(TIBIA) has aimed at satisfying the system needs for bipolar and BiCMOS devices by
developing a broad range of BiCMOS technologies, including process assembly and support.
TIBIA has been supported by all the major European companies and has established a
world-class 0.5 µí (500 nm) bipolar technology, now released as the TIBIA 2 project.
Several companies are currently going into full production using the technologies
developed with the aid of the European Commission.
The high frequency, low noise and low power consumption offered by bipolar and BiCMOS technologies are attractive for applications such as the rapidly growing consumer and communications markets that are very strong in Europe. Their development was felt to be beyond the capabilities and the financial commitments of any one company, but TIBIA collaborative work has put Europe clearly into the lead, as the rest of the world is still using 0.6-1.0 µí (600-1000 nm) geometries in this field. During the developmental work, all of the partners moved from using g-line to i-line lithography. All of them used polysilicon emitters combined with a rapid thermal annealing step to improve the bipolar transistor characteristics. The processing of the emitter-base modules, which has many possible variables, has also been optimized.
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| 1. This single-chip television receiver uses 0.5 µí BiCMOS technology. (Source: Philips Semiconductors) |
The technologies developed all have the characteristics shown in Table 1. Philips will use the low-cost 0.5 µí (500 nm) bipolar technology process for the production of single-chip television receivers instead of the earlier 0.7 µí (700 nm) BiCMOS technology (Fig. 1). More than 100 million devices of this type have already been produced, so this application will be an important driver for the new process.
Siemens is concentrating on the production of rf devices. These products are intended for wireless communications and high-speed data transfer. The BiCMOS process developed in the project has the advantage that the power consumption can be significantly reduced, as the CMOS circuits are integrated on the chip. Siemens products include a phase locked loop circuit with pre-scaler, a synthesizer and GSM transmitter-receiver ICs.
SGS-Thomson Microelectronics is focusing on computer peripherals, telephone, data communications, industrial and automotive applications. It has two variants of the process, namely high-speed bipolar and high-speed analog bipolar. Thus, a broad range of products can be covered, including the demands of high-speed data communications.
GEC-Plessey is concentrating on mobile communications, satellite uses, cable tuners and the emerging 2.4 GHz wireless LAN market. The development of the process at GEC-Plessey also included the design and characterization of a vertical PNP device (next to the standard vertical NPN transistor). Several products are defined for the tuner market, including intermediate frequency converters, up/down frequency converters and a rf tuner.
Alcatel-Mietec is investigating rf front ends that handle analog signal processing and down conversion for cellular phones and cable phone modems. They can be used in cellular phones (1.8 GHz), cable telephones and modems (20 to 800 MHz). Broadband communication products have been developed for ATM communications.
