High-speed high-density self-aligned PNP technology for low-power complementary bipolar ULSIs

A high-speed high-density self-aligned pnp technology for complementary bipolar ULSIs has been developed to achieve high-speed and low-power performance simultaneously. It is fully compatible with the npn process. A low sheet-resistance p⁺ buried layer and a low sheet-resistance extrinsic n⁺ polysilicon layer with U-grooved isolation enable the transistor size to be scaled down to about 20 μm². Current gain of 85 with 4-V collector-emitter breakdown voltage was obtained without any leakage current arising from emitter-base forward tunneling or recombination, which indicates no extrinsic base encroachment problem. A shallow emitter junction depth of 45 nm and narrow base width of 30 nm, obtained by utilizing an optimized retrograded p-well, an arsenic-implanted intrinsic base, and emitter diffusion from BF₂-implanted polysilicon, improve the maximum cutoff frequency to 35 GHz. The power dissipation of the pnp pull-down complementary emitter-follower ECL circuit with load capacitance is calculated to be reduced to 20-40% of a conventional ECL circuit.