Self heating of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs in pulsed operation

The purpose of this work was to develop a TCAD device model to study the electrical and thermal characteristics of the AlGaN/GaN HEMT in the time domain in contrast to a DC thermal equilibrium analysis. We first examined a channel temperature technique Method 3104 of MIL-STD 750D to determine the corresponding location in the HEMT structure that the gate voltage measurement predicts the temperature. Second, we investigated the performance of single and multiple pulses effects on heating of the HEMT. Third, we studied and compared the heating between the DC analysis and a RF transient (multiple pulses) analysis with the same average device power. Finally, we observe large temperature gradients in the device in initial device heating not capable of being observed in a DC TCAD device analysis.