Self-heating Effect Study of AlGaN/GaN HEMT using Pulsed IVT on the Isothermal Conditions

Abstract. AlGaN/GaN HEMTs have great potential, because of the material advantages. But there are still some issues on AlGaN/GaN HEMTs, such as current collapse (power slump), self-heating effect and power scaling problem. In this paper, we have studied the self-heating effect using pulsed IV and IVT measurement on ‘the same dc bias power condition’ - the isothermal condition. And it was shown how the self­ heating affects the AlGaN/GaN HEMT’s operation. It could be thought that one of the important reason of the power slump problem of the GaN based HEMT using the sapphire substrate and the power scaling difficulty with the device size was the thermal problem causing by the self-heating effect.