Single-Event Effects of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs Under Different Biases

The single-event effects (SEEs) of AlGaN/GaN HEMT devices under <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">off</small>-state, semi-<sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">on</small>-state, and <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">on</small>-state are systematically investigated from experiments and TCAD simulations. Experimental results show that heavy ion radiation causes the most serious damage to the devices under the <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">off</small>-state. Three regions of nondestructive, leakage degradation, and catastrophic failures induced by SEE are observed as drain-to-source voltage increases. The simulation results show that the peak electric field is largest under the <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">off</small>-state and the current collection is more significant at high-voltage bias, further confirming the severity of the SEE in the <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">off</small>-state. It has been shown that high single-event transient currents under the <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">off</small>-state can cause permanent damage to the device, leading to an increase in device leakage current.