Discrete-Pulsed Current Time Method to Estimate Channel Thermal Resistance of GaN-Based Power Devices

A simple electrical method to extract device channel thermal resistance in transistors is presented here. The method compares the dc to discrete-pulsed characteristics and estimates the effective increase in channel temperature under dc biasing conditions. Using the discrete-pulsed
$I$
versus
$t$
method, the self-heating of the device is effectively eliminated, which helps avoiding the underestimation of the device channel thermal resistance, therefore, making it possible to perform thermal measurements at the high power operation. This technique was applied to lateral GaN HEMTs with three different substrates as well as vertical GaN current aperture vertical electron transistor (CAVET) on sapphire, which proved its sensitivity and validity for different device structures and geometries.