Hot-Electron Effects in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs Under Semi-ON DC Stress

Abstract

An analysis of hot-electron (HE) effects on the dynamic resistance (dR <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ON</sub> ) of AlGaN/GaN high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) when subject to semi-ON stress is reported and compared with OFF-state stress. This is carried out using measurements and TCAD 2-D hydrodynamic simulations. Two structures with different distances between the highly carbon-doped buffer region and the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) are here considered. The additional dR <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ON</sub> in semi-ON is attributed to HEs trapping at the passivation/AlGaN interface. TCAD simulations are performed and compared with experimental results.