Project title: Reliability of GaN HEMTs
Staff: Jungwoo Joh
Sponsor: DARPA
Description:
The AlGaN-GaN heterostructure material system is a promising candidate for high power RF transistor applications. GaN High-Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMT) have shown superior power handling ability at high frequencies (>10 W/mm at 10 GHz). At this time, the key issue preventing the wide spread use of this technology is reliability: the transistor characteristics degrade rather rapidly under RF power operation. The reason for this is not yet fully understood.
In this project, we are studying the electrical reliability of GaN HEMTs fabricated by our industrial partners. Our research targets the identification of the fundamental mechanisms responsible for device degradation with the ultimate goal of providing suggestions for process changes or device design changes to mitigate the reliability issues that are identified.