Thermal characterization of MESFETs using I-V pulsed and DC measurements

Thermal MESFET characterization is important for design purposes, particularly the determination of thermal resistance and thus channel temperature. In this paper a modeling protocol is suggested in order to extract thermal resistance and channel temperature for MESFET devices from pulsed and DC measurements. The pulsed measurement system was developed and used to produce isothermal I-V characteristics for a device test with different bias conditions. The isothermal I-V characteristics are then used in conjunction with DC measurements to extract channel temperature and thermal resistance. The experimental measurements show that thermal resistance depends not only on DC power dissipation but also on bias conditions