Novel Design of Thermal-Via Configurations for Collector-Up HBTs

We devise a finite-element model to analyze the thermal performance of collector-up (C-up) heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) with a thermal-via configuration. A demonstration on the GaInP/GaAs C-up HBT is presented in this Brief, and the novelty of this work is that both 2D and 3D temperature-distribution analyses are performed. The 2D results indicate that the original thermal-via configuration can be reduced by 29%. Furthermore, the results show that the maximum temperature within the collector calculated from 3D analysis is lower than that from the 2D analysis. Based on the 3D analysis, it is revealed that the reported configuration can be reduced by 32%. Therefore, the C-up HBT with a compact thermal-via should be helpful for miniaturization of heat-dissipation packaging configurations within HBT-based high-power amplifiers.