Physical study of the dissipated power area in high electron mobility transistors for thermal modelling

The hot area in power transistors due to the power dissipation is determined from a 2D-hydrodynamic model. The power is calculated everywhere in the device from the knowledge of the physical quantities (current density, electric field). The hot area is determined accurately to be coupled to a thermal modelling giving the temperature everywhere in the device [J. Park, M.-W Shin, C.-C. Lee, Thermal modeling and measurement of GaN-based HFET devices, IEEE Electron Device Lett. 24(7) (2003) 424–426 [1]; J.-C Jacquet, R. Aubry, H. Gérard, E. Delos, N. Rolland, Y. Cordier, A. Bussutil, M. Rousseau, S.L. Delage, Analytical transport model of AlGaN/GaN HEMT based on electrical and thermal measurement, 12th GAAS Symposium, Amsterdam, 2004, pp. 235–238 [2].]. The method is applied to HEMTs (high electron mobility transistors) based on GaAs or GaN. It is shown that the hot area depends on the bias conditions and on the transistor gate recess topology.