The effects of proton irradiation on the performance of mm-wave transmission lines implemented in SiGe technology

This paper examines, for the first time, the effects of radiation on transmission lines implemented in a commercial SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) bipolar complementary metal oxide semiconductor (BiCMOS) technology. Two different types of mm-wave transmission lines were designed, fabricated, and measured up to 110 GHz, and irradiated with 63.3 MeV protons to fluences as high as 5/spl times/10/sup 13/ p/cm/sup 2/. The results demonstrate that radiation-induced changes are minimal in such lines, making them potentially suitable for use in space-based SiGe monolithic mm-wave communications systems.