Short Term Drift in the Recovery Time of GaN HEMT Switches

A step stress characterization method is proposed to enable the study of the gradual degradation of memory effect-induced recovery in GaN HEMT switches. This is achieved by characterizing the transition from off- to on-state over time and tracking short-term degradation in the recovery of the insertion loss for decreasing off-state voltages. The method is demonstrated on three different technologies. The results show that the degradation varies between foundry processes, illustrating the merit of the method for evaluating the impact of memory effects in GaN HEMT switch operation.