Ageing effects on power RF LDMOS reliability using the Transmission Line Matrix method

In this paper, the Transmission Line Matrix (TLM) method is used to study the electro-thermal performance degradation in RF LDMOS (Radio Frequency - Laterally Diffused Metal Oxide Semiconductor) transistors, through Thermal Cycling Test (TCT), as the temperature is a crucial parameter in RF devices. A hybrid approach is presented, which combines the modelling of thermal diffusion and electric effects within a two dimensional TLM model to observe the device behaviour after simulated ageing, through including the ageing loop in a unified solver. Two sets of test results are compared with published data in order to verify the performance of the proposed hybrid solver. The work shows the suitability of using the TLM to model ageing phenomenon in MOS devices.