Experimental Demonstration of an Integrated Bidirectional Gate ESD Protection Structure for p-GaN Power HEMTs

This letter experimentally demonstrates an integrated bidirectional protection structure to improve the p-GaN power HEMTs’ gate ESD reliability. The protection structure comprises an event-triggering p-GaN HEMT, a low-side resistor ${R}_{\text {L}}$ , and a high-side resistor ${R}_{\text {H}}$ . The critical parameters such as transmission line pulsing (TLP) failure current, trigger voltage ${V}_{\text {Trig}}$ and leakage current ${I}_{\text {leak}}$ are evaluated by TLP testing. It is validated that this protection structure can sustain a forward TLP failure current up to 1.42 A (equivalent human body model passing voltage ${V}_{\text {HBM}} \approx {2.13}$ kV) and a reverse TLP failure current up to 3.06 A ( ${V}_{\text {HBM}} \approx {4.59}$ kV) without sacrificing the protected device’s performance. In addition, it is verified that the TLP failure current can be adjusted by the event-triggering p-GaN HEMT’s active area and ${R}_{\text {H}}/{R}_{\text {L}}$ ratio.