Electro-thermal-stress interaction of GaN HEMT breakdown induced by high power microwave pulses

This paper demonstrated electro-thermal- stress interaction of Gallium Nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) breakdown with a high-power microwave (HPM) pulse injected. A series of GaN HEMT-based power amplifiers were designed and measured by using a special HPM system for characterizing their power-to-failure values. The crack area in the field plate of GaN HEMT was also characterized experimentally. Electro-thermal-stress simulation was performed for capturing temperature and stress distributions over the structure so as to understand breakdown mechanism of GaN HEMTs.