Hot electron generation under large-signal radio frequency operation of GaN high-electron-mobility transistors

Abstract

In order to assess the underlying physical mechanisms of hot carrier-related degradation such as defect generation in millimeter-wave GaN power amplifiers, we have simulated the electron energy distribution function under large-signal radio frequency conditions in AlGaN/GaN high-electron-mobility transistors. Our results are obtained through a full band Monte Carlo particle-based simulator self-consistently coupled to a harmonic balance circuit solver. At lower frequency, simulations of a Class AB power amplifier at 10 GHz show that the peak hot electron generation is up to 43% lower under RF drive than it is under DC conditions, regardless of the input power or temperature of operation. However, at millimeter-wave operation up to 40 GHz, RF hot carrier generation reaches that from DC biasing and even exceeds it up to 75% as the amplifier is driven into compression. Increasing the temperature of operation also shows that degradation of DC and RF characteristics are tightly correlated and mainly caused by increased phonon scattering. The accurate determination of the electron energy mapping is demonstrated to be a powerful tool for the extraction of compact models used in lifetime and reliability analysis.

Understanding high-field electron transport properties and strain effects of monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides

“…S9 for convergence test), meanwhile some numerical issues have to be addressed for computation efficiency. These details can be found in the Supplemental Material [38] (see, also, references [25,26,28,29,31,34,35,37,[39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55] Fig. 1a shows the average velocity ⟨ ⟩ of electrons as a function of the electric field, for both unstrained and strained MX2.…”

Electric Current Dependent Fracture in GaN Piezoelectric Semiconductor Ceramics

“…The material that is used in this work is GaN, which is a new kind of electronic ceramics materials with piezoelectric and semiconductor properties. Due to the stable conductivity and excellent functional properties, GaN is a perfect candidate material of electromechanical, high-power and high-frequency devices for operation in extreme environments [ 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 ]. Here, GaN ceramics were manufactured from pure GaN powder by vacuum hot pressing at 450 °C (with a density of 5.9 relative to water), which exhibits properties similar to that of N -type semiconductors with a Curie temperature of 265 °C.…”

Effect of Hot Electron Stress on AlGaN/GaN HEMTs of Hydrogen Poisoning

“…Degradation of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs under operating conditions remains a major issue. In particular, hot electron stress (HES) can trigger on-state degradation by generating defects [15]- [17], which is consistently cited as one of the most relevant mechanisms that would limit the performance and reliability of the devices [18], [19]. Furthermore, low frequency noise (LFN) is a useful technique to characterize the defects in microelectronic devices [20], [21], and there are extensive series of LFN investigations on the Si and SiC based MOS transistors, and AlGaN/GaN HEMTs [22].…”