Linearity and gain characteristics of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs

Author

Wu, Y.F. ; Chavarkar, P.M. ; Moore, M. ; Parikh, P. ; Mishra, U.K.

Author_Institution

Cree Lighting Co., USA

fYear

2002

fDate

8-11 Dec. 2002

Firstpage

697

Lastpage

699

Abstract

AlGaN/GaN HEMTs exhibited high cut-off frequencies at low current levels, which enabled linear operation at close to class-B biases. When biased at 35V and 40mA/mm (4% of channel current), excellent linearity performance including simultaneous 3/sup rd/ order intermodulation (IM3) of -30dBc and PAE of 40% was obtained at 4 GHz, with only -2.6dB back off. However, the gain reduction at high current levels made class-A operation less favorable. These gain characteristics are believed to be related to the ratio of the effective electron mass (m/sub e/) over the conduction band discontinuity (/spl Delta/E/sub c/) of AlGaN/GaN.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; aluminium compounds; effective mass; gallium compounds; high electron mobility transistors; intermodulation; wide band gap semiconductors; 35 V; 4 GHz; 40 percent; AlGaN-GaN; AlGaN/GaN HEMT; class-A operation; class-B operation; conduction band discontinuity; cut-off frequency; effective electron mass; gain characteristics; linearity; power-added efficiency; third-order intermodulation; Aluminum gallium nitride; Cutoff frequency; Electrons; FETs; Gallium nitride; HEMTs; Linearity; MODFETs; Performance gain; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electron Devices Meeting, 2002. IEDM '02. International

Conference_Location

San Francisco, CA, USA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7462-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IEDM.2002.1175934

Filename

1175934