Impact of proton fluence on DC and trapping characteristics in InAlN/GaN HEMTs

Robustness of InAlN/GaN devices under proton radiation is investigated. Several proton fluences ranging from 1 × 1014 to 4 × 1014 have been considered on two typologies of devices. Displacement damage is found to be the major responsible of device DC degradation leading to threshold voltage positive shift, ON resistance increase and drain current decrease, in all cases well correlated with proton fluence. Negligible difference is noticed in displacement damage effects measured on different device typologies. Furthermore, device geometry does not influence the impact of proton radiation on main DC parameters, either if gate width or length are considered. Radiation significantly affects trapping properties. A good correlation between the so-called current collapse increase and proton fluence is demonstrated when a high gate drain voltage value is imposed as trapping condition. Moreover radiation enhances the contribution of dynamic ON resistance and transconductance peak variation on current collapse increase.