Reliability of GaN High-Electron-Mobility Transistors: State of the Art and Perspectives

By Gaudenzio Meneghesso, Giovanni Verzellesi, F. Danesin, F. Rampazzo, F. Zanon, A. Tazzoli, Matteo Meneghini, Enrico Zanoni. IEEE transactions on device and materials reliability, 2008

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Failure modes and mechanisms of AlGaN/GaN high-electron-mobility transistors are reviewed. Data from three de-accelerated tests are presented, which demonstrate a close correlation between failure modes and bias point. Maximum degradation was found in "semi-on" conditions, close to the maximum of hot-electron generation which was detected with the aid of electroluminescence (EL) measurements. This suggests a contribution of hot-electron effects to device degradation, at least at moderate drain bias (VDS<30 V). A procedure for the characterization of hot carrier phenomena based on EL microscopy and spectroscopy is described. At high drain bias (VDS>30-50 V), new failure mechanisms are triggered, which induce an increase of gate leakage current. The latter is possibly related with the inverse piezoelectric effect leading to defect generation due to strain relaxation, and/or to localized permanent breakdown of the AlGaN barrier layer. Results are compared with literature data throughout the text.

Subfields: Condensed Matter Physics, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b49685ec3b319b1fa6b57817653aeeda655a44d1

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In Condensed Matter Physics

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Citations in the corpus

Testing the Temperature Limits of GaN-Based HEMT Devices (2010, methodology): “The failure and reliability analysis of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs has therefore identified a large number of elements in the structure, which could cause degradation and failure [ 8 ]–[10].”
Investigation of Trapping and Hot-Electron Effects in GaN HEMTs by Means of a Combined Electrooptical Method (2011, methodology): “A widely adopted method for the characterization of trapping phenomena is based on pulsed ID–VD measurements [6], [ 7 ].”
Materials and processing issues in vertical GaN power electronics (2017, background): “its long-term stability and reliability, especially for very high-voltage operations [14,15].”
AlGaN/GaN-Based HEMTs Failure Physics and Reliability: Mechanisms Affecting Gate Edge and Schottky Junction (2013, background): “E. Zanoni, M. Meneghini, and G. Meneghesso are with the Department of Information Engineering, Universita di Padova, Padova 35131, Italy (e-mail: zanoni@dei.unipd.it; matteo.meneghini@dei.unipd.it).”
Buffer Traps in Fe-Doped AlGaN/GaN HEMTs: Investigation of the Physical Properties Based on Pulsed and Transient Measurements (2014, background): “OVER the last few years, the technology of AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) has shown impressive improvements; as a consequence, these devices are expected to play a key role for the fabrication of next generation power microwave systems, because of the high mobility, high satura”