Abstract:

Nowadays,severe electromagnetic circumstances pose a serious threat to electronic systems.The excellent performance of gallium nitride based high electron mobility transistors makes them more suitable for high power and high frequency applications.With the continuous improvement in the quality of crystal epitaxial material and device manufacture technology,gallium nitride semiconductor devices are rapidly developing towards the direction of high power and miniaturization,which challenges the reliability and stability of devices.In this paper,the damage effects of the high power electromagnetic pulse(EMP) on the enhanced GaN high-electron-mobility transistor(HEMT) are investigated in detail.The mechanism is presented by analyzing the variation of the internal multiple physical quantities distribution in the device.It is revealed that the device damage is dominated by the different thermal accumulation effect such as self-heating,avalanche breakdown and hot carrier emission during the action of the high power EMP.Furthermore,the multi-scale protection design of the GaN HEMT against the high power electromagnetic interference(EMI) is presented and verified by simulation study.The device structure optimization results demonstrate that a proper passivation layer which enhances the breakdown characteristics can improve the anti-EMI capability.The circuit optimization presents the influences of external components on the damage progress.It is found that the resistive components which are in series at the source and gate will strengthen the capability of the device to withstand high power EMP damage.All above conclusions are important for device reliability design using gallium nitride materials,especially when the device operates under severe electromagnetic circumstances.

Key words: gallium nitride, electromagnetic pulse, damage effect, protection design