BiCMOS

BiCMOS

The history of semiconductor devices starts in 1930’s when Lienfed and Heil first proposed the mosfet. However it took 30 years before this idea was applied to functioning devices to be used in practical applications, and up to the late 1980 this trend took a turn when MOS technology caught up and there was a cross over between bipolar and MOS share.CMOS was finding more wide spread use due to its low power dissipation, high packing density and simple design, such that by 1990 CMOS covered more than 90% of total MOS scale.

In 1983 bipolar compatible process based on CMOS technology was developed and BiCMOS technology with both the MOS and bipolar device fabricated on the same chip was developed and studied. The objective of the BiCMOS is to combine bipolar and CMOS so as to exploit the advantages of both at the circuit and system levels. Since 1985, the state-of-the-art bipolar CMOS structures have been converging. Today BiCMOS has become one of the dominant technologies used for high speed, low power and highly functional VLSI circuits especially when the BiCMOS process has been enhanced and integrated in to the CMOS process without any additional steps. Because the process step required for both CMOS and bipolar are similar, these steps cane be shared for both of them.