ON-state breakdown mechanism of GaN power HEMTs

Author

Jinhan Zhang ; Sen Huang ; Qi Zhou ; Xinhua Wang ; Ke Wei ; Guoguo Liu ; Yingkui Zheng ; Xiaojuan Chen ; Xinyu Liu ; Zhongjie Yu ; Wanjun Chen ; Bo Zhang

Author_Institution

State Key Lab. of Electron. Thin Films & Integrated Devices, Univ. of Electron. Sci. & Technol. of China, Chengdu, China

fYear

2014

fDate

15-19 June 2014

Firstpage

237

Lastpage

240

Abstract

Temperature-dependent ON-state breakdown (BV_ON) loci of AlGaN/GaN high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) were experimentally demonstrated for the first time. With gate-current extraction technique, impact ionization was revealed to be responsible for the ON-state breakdown in our device as the HEMTs is marginally turned on. The characteristic electric-field E_i of impact ionization was extracted exhibiting an U-shaped temperature dependence from 40 to -30 ^oC, with minimum E_i occurs at -10 ^oC. Such anomalous temperature dependence of E_i together with the kink effect observed in our devices stem from coulomb scattering effect of the acceptor-like traps in AlGaN/GaN heterostructures.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; aluminium compounds; gallium compounds; ionisation; power HEMT; semiconductor device breakdown; wide band gap semiconductors; AlGaN-GaN; Coulomb scattering effect; U-shaped temperature dependence; acceptor-like traps; characteristic electric-field; gate-current extraction technique; high-electron-mobility transistors; impact ionization; kink effect; power HEMTs; temperature 40 degC to -30 degC; temperature-dependent ON-state breakdown mechanism; Aluminum gallium nitride; Electric breakdown; Gallium nitride; HEMTs; Logic gates; MODFETs; Temperature measurement; AlGaN/GaN HEMTs; ON-state breakdown; acceptor-like traps; coulomb scattering; impact ionization;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Power Semiconductor Devices & IC's (ISPSD), 2014 IEEE 26th International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Waikoloa, HI

ISSN

1943-653X

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-2917-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ISPSD.2014.6856020

Filename

6856020