Electro-thermal modeling of multifinger AlGaN/GaN HEMT device operation including thermal substrate effects

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.microrel.2007.01.090Get rights and content

Abstract

AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) device operation was modeled from the sub-micrometer scale to the substrate using a combination of an electro-thermal device model for the active device with realistic power dissipation within the device and a coupled three dimensional thermal model to account for the substrate. Temperatures for various points within a device were determined as a function of biasing conditions, substrate thickness and temperature, number of fingers, and gate length and pitch. As an example, we have used our model to show that life test results of industry-relevant devices can be significantly affected by the exact testing technique used.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Air Force Research Laboratory Sensors Directorate device team of R.C. Fitch, J.K. Gillespie, G.H. Jessen, D. Langley, and G.D. Via for experimental data used for model validation as well as D. Dorsey and C. Bozada for advice and for a critical reading of this manuscript and J. Theimer, K.D. Leedy, G.D. Via and S. Motakef for several helpful discussions.

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      Citation Excerpt :

      To observe the HEMT multiphysical behavior, several works have dealt with the simple modeling of the HEMT either electrical [8], thermal or electrothermal by the finite element method [9–11]. To study the electrical or thermal behavior of the HEMT, and to identify the interaction between the electrical and thermal parameters during component operation, they performed simulations to determine the influence of the voltage applied across the transistor on its thermal behavior in general and on temperature variation in particular [12–14]. But few works have dealt with complete modeling (electro thermomechanical) or just mechanics to identify the interaction between electrical, thermal, and mechanical variables [15–17].

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