Hot-Phonon Effect on the Electrothermal Behavior of Submicrometer III-V HEMTs

An investigation of the effect of hot phonons on the electrothermal behavior of GaAs- and GaN-based high electron mobility transistors is carried out using both standard isothermal and self-consistent electrothermal Monte Carlo simulations. The influence of the hot-phonon effect is found to be significantly overestimated when the isothermal approximation is used. The full electrothermal simulations highlight the importance of correctly accounting for the internal temperature profiles of the devices: when this is done, the hot-phonon effect itself has relatively little impact on the electronic and thermal response.