On the Single-Event Burnout Performance of a GaN HEMT With Sunken Source-Connected Field Plate Architecture

The field plate technology has been regarded as the best practical solution for alleviating several reliability issues observed with high power GaN HEMTs for mm-Wave applications. A nonoverlapping sunken source-connected field plate architecture significantly boosts the OFF-state breakdown characteristics of the device while inflicting modest trade-offs to the RF performance. This work focuses on the TCAD-based assessment to develop physical insights into the reliability of the sunken architecture to qualify the device for space-electronics. The OFF-state breakdown characteristics of the device is studied to identify the vulnerable points for heavy ion particle strike. The single-event transients accompanied with the heavy ion particle strike is evaluated under different conditions to investigate the reliability of the sunken field plate architecture with regard to the single-event burnout (SEB) phenomenon. The analysis is carried out both by localizing the particle strike across the access regions and through an angled strike to determine both the LET and drain bias threshold resulting in a device burnout.