Critical factors influencing the voltage robustness of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs

The influence of the electric field on the reliability of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs is investigated in this work. We first demonstrate that at a certain electric field strength at the gate edge the gate characteristics of the device changes. This degradation is irreversible and is strongly influenced by growth parameter. A drain-voltage step-stress method is applied to the devices for investigating different layouts, and a consequent application enabled us to assign parameters mitigating the peak field strength and improve reliability.