TY - GEN
T1 - Accelerating the Recovery of p-Gate GaN HEMTs after Overvoltage Stresses
AU - Kozak, Joseph P.
AU - Song, Qihao
AU - Liu, Jingcun
AU - Zhang, Ruizhe
AU - Li, Qiang
AU - Saito, Wataru
AU - Zhang, Yuhao
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to acknowledge Silvaco Inc. for their collaboration with TCAD simulations, as well as Kaustubh Joshi for the discussions on this work.
Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by the High Density Integration and the Power Management Consortiums of the Center for Power Electronics Systems (CPES), Virginia Tech.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 IEEE.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) have limited avalanche capability and withstand the surge energy through capacitive charging, which often causes significant voltage overshoot up to their catastrophic limit. This work explores the parametric shift and recovery of a commercial Schottky-type, p-gate GaN HEMT under repetitive, overvoltage switching stresses near its dynamic breakdown voltage. In particular, the device recovery under various temperatures is comprehensively studied, which allows the identification of the de-trapping dynamics and dominant trap energy levels for the first time. Devices were stressed in a clamped inductive switching circuit with 1-million surge energy cycles with a voltage overshoot reaching 1300 V. The parametric shifts showed a saturation and were found to be caused by holes generated in impact ionization. The device recovery was found to be accelerated by elevated ambient temperatures, and a hole-trap energy level of 0.52 eV was identified to dominate the parametric shift and recovery. These results suggest the significance of hole dynamics on the overvoltage robustness of p-gate GaN HEMTs near their dynamic breakdown voltage.
AB - GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) have limited avalanche capability and withstand the surge energy through capacitive charging, which often causes significant voltage overshoot up to their catastrophic limit. This work explores the parametric shift and recovery of a commercial Schottky-type, p-gate GaN HEMT under repetitive, overvoltage switching stresses near its dynamic breakdown voltage. In particular, the device recovery under various temperatures is comprehensively studied, which allows the identification of the de-trapping dynamics and dominant trap energy levels for the first time. Devices were stressed in a clamped inductive switching circuit with 1-million surge energy cycles with a voltage overshoot reaching 1300 V. The parametric shifts showed a saturation and were found to be caused by holes generated in impact ionization. The device recovery was found to be accelerated by elevated ambient temperatures, and a hole-trap energy level of 0.52 eV was identified to dominate the parametric shift and recovery. These results suggest the significance of hole dynamics on the overvoltage robustness of p-gate GaN HEMTs near their dynamic breakdown voltage.
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U2 - 10.1109/IRPS48227.2022.9764463
DO - 10.1109/IRPS48227.2022.9764463
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85130685987
T3 - IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium Proceedings
SP - P221-P225
BT - 2022 IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium, IRPS 2022 - Proceedings
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 2022 IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium, IRPS 2022
Y2 - 27 March 2022 through 31 March 2022
ER -