An overview of GaN FET Technology, Reliability, Radiation and Market for future Space Application

Carbone, Marco; Marin, Fernando Javier Pinto; Lapeña, Emilio; Gómez-Carpintero, Fernando; Hirche, K.; Morand, S.; Marin, M.; Prevot, Sylvain; Guidoin, Alexandre; Neugnot, Nicolas; Alonso, Mario Gomez; Alvarez, Miguel Rodriguez

doi:10.1109/espc.2019.8932067

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…In modern power applications such as data centers, electrified transportation, renewable energy, fossil energy production, and crypto mining, power electronics are considered as some of the weakest links affecting the overall system reliability and the associated maintenance/repair costs [1][2][3]. GaN HEMTs are emerging as a promising choice for future power converters.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterization of GaN HEMTs' Aging Precursors and Activation Energy Under a Wide Range of Thermal Cycling Tests

Sayed

Kulothungan

Krishnamoorthy

2023

IEEE Open J. Ind. Electron. Soc.

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In this paper, 650 V / 7.5 A rated enhancement-mode (E-mode) Gallium Nitride (GaN) highelectron-mobility-transistors (HEMTs) with integrated gate drivers are characterized under thousands of accelerated thermal cycles (ATC) at different junction temperature stresses. This research helps in developing fundamental insights into GaN HEMTs' aging characteristics through the degradation of ten devices under ATC tests. For over 20,000 thermal cycles, the forward and reverse conduction losses, IGSS, Coss, and the RDSon are experimentally measured to identify the parameter shifts and the corresponding precursors. Results indicate that both IGSS and Coss do not deviate much, but the values of RDSon, the forward and reverse conduction losses vary considerably with device aging. This paper also presents an empirical method to estimate the correlation between the acceleration factors of the GaN FETs' degradation process and the thermal cycling conditions. The value of the activation energy of the tested GaN HEMT devices is also derived using the empirical equations to be about 1.13 eV under the applied stress factors. This study finds that the degradation process of GaN HEMTs with age facilitates a reasonable correlation with different failure mechanisms, which further helps in reliability improvement.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterization of GaN HEMTs' Aging Precursors and Activation Energy Under a Wide Range of Thermal Cycling Tests

Sayed

Kulothungan

Krishnamoorthy

2023

IEEE Open J. Ind. Electron. Soc.

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“…Additionally, GaN exhibits excellent thermal and chemical stability even at high temperatures, making it a promising candidate for high-temperature thermoelectric materials in addition to its advantages in the field of high-power devices [6]. However, a large number of defects are located in GaN-based HEMTs [7][8][9][10]. To be specific, the presence of various types and positions of defects can significantly impact the performance and reliability of devices [11], and there are many fundamental obstacles to their mechanism analysis.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electronic properties and passivation mechanism of AlGaN/GaN heterojunction with vacancies: a DFT study

et al. 2023

Phys. Scr.

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A significant issue for GaN-based high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) in high power devices is the material defect, particularly the defect states generated by the defects, which has a negative impact on the device carrier concentration and carrier transport. Based on density functional theory (DFT), we investigate the microscopic properties of different type point vacancies in the AlGaN/GaN heterojunction. It is found that N vacancy introduces defect states near the conduction band minimum (CBM) of the GaN layer and AlGaN/GaN interface. Ga and Al vacancies introduce defect states near the valence band maximum (VBM) in bulk and interface of AlGaN/GaN heterojunction. Moreover, Al vacancy is more likely to be an effective candidate for acceptor defect than Ga vacancy. We further study several AlGaN/GaN interface passivation schemes by introducing F, V group element P, and III group element B at the AlGaN/GaN heterojunction interface to analyze the passivation mechanism. According to the results of the passivation models, B passivation of Ga and Al vacancies is an effective method to completely remove the defect states from Ga and Al vacancy defects. Combining the III and V groups elements into the passivated process may be effective in achieving high-quality AlGaN/GaN heterojunction interface for the future GaN-based HEMTs fabrication.

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“…As a result, space-rated power systems are often performance constrained by power switches. Two, GaN's wide band-gap structure has shown inherent efficacy against total ionizing dose (TID) radiation [2][3]. It's conceivable that the performance gap between commercial and future space-rated GaN devices will vastly outperform that of Si.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Failure mode discovery, classification, and causation is on-going. Where GaN excels in TID radiation, it may be particularly sensitive to Single Event Effects (SEE) [4] [2]. Furthermore, GaN FET's have a radically different operating principle and physical structure than MOSFETs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It's this gas that yields high electron mobility [1]. It will likely take time for the radiation hardening test methodology to fully adjust to the needs of GaN [2]. That said, research and development efforts by NASA NEPP, ESA, academic research groups, and a select lot of private companies (Freebird, EPC, Renesas, SSDI, Teledyne-e2v) [2] have resulted in promising insights, and a small lot of space-rated low voltage GaN devices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gallium Nitride Efficacy for High-Reliability Forward Converters in Spacecraft

Phillips¹

2022

IEEE J. Emerg. Sel. Topics Power Electron.

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Gallium Nitride (GaN) devices show particular promise for space-rated power conversion applications that rely on MOSFET technology whose performance is severely limited by the radiation hardening processes. Though GaN failure mode classification and radiation hardened device variety is limited, the current space-rated selection pool can still yield significant efficiency and power density improvements. However, the context of GaN research is often future oriented such that the application of GaN to common, proven, space-rated converter designs are rare.The presented work quantifies the performance benefits of market available, space-rated GaN HEMTs over radiation hardened MOSFETs for a synchronous forward converter, which remains an extremely popular topology for isolated, medium power, DC-DC conversion on NASA satellite systems. Two 75-Watt, space-rated forward converters were designed, implemented, and benchmarked, with the power switch technology being the single variable of change. By forming pareto-optimal fronts of the key device metrics, optimal Rad-hard MOSFETs were chosen so that the baseline converter performance was considered best-case.The frequency limitations of common, available, Rad-hard PWM controllers limited power density in the GaN and Si converters alike, however, efficiency gains proved sizeable. The GaN based converter saw a peak efficiency of 86%, which was a 4.54% improvement over the Si baseline. Detailed efficiency and loss differential plots are presented which show the GaN converter's reduced sensitivity to input voltage. Extreme similarity between the waveforms and functional characteristics of the two converters verified the design of the experiment. Furthermore, v the performance of the baseline Si converter proved very similar to that of a large sampling of space-rated forward converters, making the experimental results have a high degree of utility for manufacturers.vi Table of ContentsPreface .

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An overview of GaN FET Technology, Reliability, Radiation and Market for future Space Application

Cited by 11 publications

References 7 publications

Characterization of GaN HEMTs' Aging Precursors and Activation Energy Under a Wide Range of Thermal Cycling Tests

Characterization of GaN HEMTs' Aging Precursors and Activation Energy Under a Wide Range of Thermal Cycling Tests

Electronic properties and passivation mechanism of AlGaN/GaN heterojunction with vacancies: a DFT study

Gallium Nitride Efficacy for High-Reliability Forward Converters in Spacecraft

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