Evaluating the self-heating thermal resistance of bipolar transistors by DC measurements: A critical review and update

The most relevant techniques proposed in the literature for the extraction of the self-heating thermal resistance of bipolar transistors from measurements of their DC electrical characteristics are analyzed and compared for both GaAs HBTs and silicon BJTs. A simple procedure is presented to accurately evaluate the thermal resistance of silicon BJTs with non-negligible Early effect, for which traditional HBT-oriented methods are found to be of little value.