An experimental and systematic insight into the temperature sensitivity for a 0.15-µm gate-length HEMT based on the GaN technology

Presently, growing attention is being given to the analysis of the impact of the ambient temperature on the GaN HEMT performance. The present article is aimed at investigating both DC and microwave characteristics of a GaN-based HEMT versus the ambient temperature using measured data, an equivalent-circuit model, and a sensitivity-based analysis. The tested device is a 0.15-µm ultra-short gate-length AlGaN/GaN HEMT with a gate width of 200 µm. The interdigitated layout of this device is based on four fingers, each with a length of 50 µm. The scattering parameters are measured from 45 MHz to 50 GHz with the ambient temperature varied from −40◦C to 150◦C. A systematic study of the temperature-dependent performance is carried out by means of a sensitivity-based analysis. The achieved findings show that by the heating the transistor, the DC and microwave performance are degraded, due to the degradation in the electron transport properties.