Experimental study of 650V AlGaN/GaN HEMT short-circuit safe operating area (SCSOA)

The short-circuit reliability of power switches plays very important part in many applications, where a 10μs short-circuit duration at 400V is usually required for 650V switches. Although emerging high voltage AlGaN/GaN HEMT technologies have shown switching advantages, the short-circuit performance has not been thoroughly investigated. In this work, we present an experimental study and numerical simulation analysis of 650V AlGaN/GaN HEMTs short-circuit safe-operating-area (SCSOA), and provide a theory for the reduction in ruggedness at high voltage short circuit conditions.