Gregory G. Romas

Effect of the interface recombination current fluctuations on 1/f noise of gated lateral bipolar transistors

A gated lateral bipolar transistor is a bulk lateral BJT in parallel with a MOSFET at the surface. The base current components such as surface recombination and space charge recombination currents are two of the dominant noise sources in the lateral BJT. If the gate is biased such that the MOSFET is in the off-state by accumulating carriers underneath the oxide in the base surface, the noise contribution by these two base current (Ib) components can be better understood. The carrier accumulation in the base surface can be modulated with different gate bias, which in turn will affect the fluctuation of the surface recombination current component. In this paper, noise power spectral density of gated lateral PNP transistors, fabricated in Texas Instruments Standard Bipolar Process, has been discussed. The base current noise power spectral density (SIb) was extracted from the cross-correlation noise spectrum measured between the base and the collector circuits for different gate biasing conditions. Based on the frequency exponent dependence of the noise power spectral density, it was found that the noise in the low frequency range is in the form of 1/f noise. SIb was found to be the dominant noise source for these devices as the coherence between the base and collector power spectral density was very close to 1. SIb was extracted for a base current range of 8 nA to 1microA for a gate bias range of 0V to 40V. The SPICE noise model parameters, AF and KF were also determined for each case from the dependence of SIb on Ib. The noise was measured on devices with different base width values.