Reliability testing of 0.1 /spl mu/m GaAs pseudomorphic HEMT MMIC amplifiers

Reliability testing was completed on 0.1 /spl mu/m gate length GaAs pseudomorphic HEMT MMICs. The circuit used for reliability testing is the ALH225C, a 2-stage Q band balanced amplifier. This MMIC was fabricated on both power and low noise substrate profiles. Both versions of the circuit were tested. The lifetests were conducted with accelerated DC bias and temperature conditions in order to attain failure in a reasonable length of time. Approximately 152 MMICs were used for step stress and lifetesting at 255, 270 and 285/spl deg/C ambient temperature. Despite the aggressive bias used in this lifetest, the estimated lifetimes at 125/spl deg/C for this process are high. The parameters extracted from this study for the high power MBE profile are MTF (125/spl deg/C) of 6/spl times/10/sup 9/ hours, with activation energy of 1.7 eV, and for the low noise MBE profile are MTF (125/spl deg/C) of 7/spl times/10/sup 7/ hours, with activation energy of 1.3 eV.