On the correlation between drain-gate breakdown voltage and hot-electron reliability in InP HEMTs

By comparing devices with different recess widths, we show that the off-state drain-gate breakdown voltage (BV/sub DG/) may give totally misleading indications on the reliability of lattice-matched InP HEMTs under hot-electron (HE) and impact ionization conditions, from both standpoints of gradual and catastrophic degradation. Since the hot-electron degradation effects observed in our HEMTs are quite common, we believe that our results should be considered as a general caveat whenever indications on HE HEMT robustness are inferred from BV/sub DG/ measurements.