Effect of the High-Temperature Off-State Stresses on the Degradation of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs

GaN-based high electron mobility transistors offer high carrier density combined with high electron mobility and often require operation at high frequencies, voltages, and temperatures. The device may be under high temperature and high voltage at the same time in actual operation. In this work, the impact of separate off-state stresses, separate high-temperature stresses, and off-state stresses at high temperatures on AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) grown on Si substrates was investigated. The output current and gate leakage of the device degenerated to different degrees under either isolated off-state or high-temperature stress. The threshold voltage of the device only exhibited obvious negative drift under the action of high-temperature and off-state stresses. The parameter at high temperature (or room temperature) before stress application was the reference. We found that there was no significant difference in the degradation rate of drain current and transconductance peak when the same off-state stress was applied to the device at different temperatures. It was concluded that, under the high-temperature off-state electric field pressure, there were two degradation mechanisms: one was the inverse piezoelectric polarization mechanism only related to the electric field, and the other was the degradation mechanism of the simultaneous action of temperature and electric field.