Disclosed is a semiconductor structure including a device, such as a lateral heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT), made up of a combination of at least three different semiconductor materials with different bandgap sizes for improved performance. In the device, a base layer of the base region can be positioned laterally between a collector layer of a collector region and an emitter layer of an emitter region and can be physically separated therefrom by buffer layers. The base layer can be made of a narrow bandgap semiconductor material, the collector layer and, optionally, the emitter layer can be made of a wide bandgap semiconductor material, and the buffer layers can be made of a semiconductor material with a bandgap between that of the narrow bandgap semiconductor material and the wide bandgap semiconductor material. Also disclosed herein is a method of forming the structure.