The effect of hot electron stress on the DC and microwave characteristics of GaAs-PHEMTs and InP-HEMTs

This work reports on hot electron stress experiments performed on SiN passivated AlGaAs-InGaAs-GaAs pseudomorphic HEMTs and InAlAs-InGaAs-InP lattice-matched HEMTs. We study the effects of the stress on both the device DC and RF characteristics, and investigate their correlation. In both the GaAs and InP HEMTs the high drain bias, room temperature hot electron stress produces some permanent change of the DC and RF characteristics which can be attributed to charge trapping phenomena.