Impact ionization in N-polar AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors
Abstract
The existence of impact ionization as one of the open questions for GaN device reliability was studied in N-polar AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors. Electroluminescence (EL) imaging and spectroscopy from underneath the device gate contact revealed the presence of hot electrons in excess of the GaN bandgap energy even at moderate on-state bias conditions, enabling impact ionization with hole currents up to several hundreds of pA/mm. The detection of high energy luminescence from hot electrons demonstrates that EL analysis is a highly sensitive tool to study degradation mechanisms in GaN devices.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Aug 11, 2014
- Source ID
- 10.1063/1.4892449
Entities
People
- M. J. Uren
- M. Kuball
- N. Killat
- S. Kolluri
- Sallie Ann Keller
- Umesh K. Mishra
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- University of Bristol
- University of California, Santa Barbara