SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICE

摘要

A semiconductor device of the invention in the form of a superlattice-heterojunction bipolar transistor (SL-HBT) (10) incorporates a superlattice region (16) within an emitter mesa (21). The superlattice region (16) provides a non-linear response to a sufficiently high level of device current to counteract thermal runaway. This protects the device from damaging levels of current. The device (10) may be a radio-frequency SL-HBT with performance equivalent to that of a conventional heterojunction bipolar transistor. The invention may also be implemented as a semiconductor laser.