Damage effects on low noise amplifiers with microwave pulses

•P ∝ t− 1 at 20 ns–100 ns and P ∝ t− 1/2 at 100 ns–2000 ns.•Damage power declines as pulse number increases when pulse number is less than 100.•Gate metal strip and its surroundings are vulnerable parts of PHEMT.•Vulnerable parts of BJT are input terminal of base electrode and Si materials below.•For BJT, the longer the pulse width is, the larger the damage area is.

The damage effect experiment is carried out to the low noise amplifiers (LNAs) based on Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT) and Pseudomorphic High Electronic Mobility Transistor (PHEMT) by microwave pulse injection experiment platform. The essence of the LNA damage with microwave pulses is the damage to the core semiconductor device. The influence rule upon the damage power of the LNA by different microwave pulse widths and pulse numbers is obtained. The injection, reflection and output waveforms are measured by high frequency oscilloscope and the typical damage waveforms of the LNA are analyzed. Inspection is made on the damaged semiconductor device by a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and the microscopic damage images of the semiconductor devices with different pulse widths and pulse numbers are analyzed in comparison.