Pulsed current-voltage-temperature characteristics of AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistor under isothermal conditions

Abstract

AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) have great potential, because of the material advantages. However, there are still some problems with AlGaN/GaN HEMTs, such as current collapse (power slump), the self-heating effect and the power scaling problem. In this paper, we have studied the self-heating effect using pulsed current-voltage (IV) and current-voltage-temperature (IVT) measurement under 'the same dc bias power condition'- the isothermal condition. It was shown how self-heating affects the AlGaN/GaN HEMT's operation. It can be thought that a reason for the power slump problem of the GaN-based HEMT using a sapphire substrate and the power scaling difficulty is a thermal problem caused by the self-heating effect.