Damage effects and mechanism of the GaN high electron mobility transistor caused by high electromagnetic pulse

Abstract

As electromagnetic environment of semiconductor device and integrated circuit deteriorates increasingly, electromagnetic pulse (EMP) of device and damage phenomenon have received more and more attention. In this paper, the damage effect and mechanism of the GaN high electron mobility field effect transistor(HEMT) under EMP are investigated. A two-dimensional electro-thermal theoretical model of GaN HEMT under EMP is proposed, which includes GaN polarization effect, mobility degradation in large electric field, avalanche generation effect, and self-heating effect. The internal transient response of AlGaN/ GaN HEMT is analyzed under the EMP injected into the gate electrode, and the damage mechanism is studied. The results show that the temperature of device keeps increasing, and the rate is divided into three stages, which present a tendency of rapid-slow-sharp till burn-out. The first rapid increasing of temperature is caused by the avalanche breakdown, and then rate becomes smaller due to the decrease of electric field. As the temperature is more than 2000 K, a positive feedback is formed between the hot electron emission and temperature of device, which causes temperature to sharply increase till burn-out. The maximum values of electric field and current density are located at the cylinder surface beneath the gate around the source, which is damage prone because of heat accumulation. Finally, the dependences of the EMP damage power, P, and the absorbed energy, E, on pulse width are obtained in a nanosecond range by adopting the data analysis software. It is demonstrated that the damage power threshold decreases but the energy threshold increases slightly with the increasing of pulse-width. The proposed formulas P = 38-0.052 and E = 1.1 0.062 can estimate the HPM pulse-width dependent damage power threshold and energy threshold of AlGaN/GaN HEMT, which can provide a good prediction of device damage and a guiding significance for electromagnetic pulse resistance destruction.

Damage Effects and Mechanisms of High-Power Microwaves on Double Heterojunction GaN HEMT

“…where X, Y, and Z represent the coordinate directions of the device; P SP stands for spontaneous polarization effect; P PE stands for piezoelectric polarization; e 31 , e 33 , c 13 , and c 33 stand for piezoelectric coefficient and elasticity coefficient, respectively; a 0 stands for strain lattice constant; a stands for unstrained crystalline constant; and relax is the relaxation parameter [22,23]. In addition to this, trap effects and other physical models were included in the model.…”

“…Subsequently, the mean free path of the carriers was raised, and the device began to be affected by the hot electron emission current. Since the hot electron emission current density was positively correlated with temperature and independent of the applied voltage [22], accelerating the increase in the device temperature, this was more likely to cause a breakdown. Therefore, the high domain-limiting characteristics of the double heterojunction permitted the electron injection efficiency to be increased, the transport efficiency to be improved, and the leakage current to be reduced.…”

Damage effects and mechanism of the silicon NPN monolithic composite transistor induced by high-power microwaves

“…The influence of HPM on modern semiconductor devices and circuit systems has received increasing attention. [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] A simulation of a bipolar junction transistor (BJT) with the high electromagnetic pulses injection from the collector was simulated by utilizing the finite difference time domain method in two dimensions, the results indicated that the damage spot lay between the emitter and the collector where the avalanche breakdown occurs. [13] The transient response characteristics were simulated using the improver two-dimensional semiconductor device simulation program in order to obtain the damage effect of the BJT under the injection of electromagnetic pulse, which showed that the peak temperature appears on the edge of the emitter.…”