Performance of commercial foundry-level AlGaN/GaN HEMTs after hot electron stressing

Abstract The performance degradation of commercial foundry level GaN HEMTs placed under a constant-power drain voltage step-stress test has been studied. By utilizing electroluminescence measurement techniques to optimize hot electron stress testing conditions (Meneghini, 2012), no significant permanent changes in saturation current ( I dss ), transconductance (Gm), and threshold voltage ( V th ) can be seen after stress testing of drain voltages from 30 V up to 200 V. We observe little permanent degradation due to hot electron effects in GaN HEMTs at these extreme operating conditions and it is inferred that other considerations, such as key dimensions in channel or peak electric field (Chynoweth, 1958; Zhang and Singh, 2001) [2,3], are more relevant to physics of failure than drain bias alone.

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