Degradation of Power P-GaN HEMT Under High Voltage Switching

This paper reports on an impact of repetitive high voltage hard switching on electrical performance of p-type gate normally off GaN power HEMTs. Hard-switching-related failure and degradation in such power p-GaN HEMTs is currently intensively studied since introduction of p-type gate introduces potentially new/specific effects which were not sufficiently addressed in the literature yet. For these studies, commercially available normally off power AIGaN/GaN HEMTs were exposed to hard switching stress lasting up to 168 h. Stress-induced significant shift of most electrical parameters has been observed. Most impacted parameters are the channel resistance in on-state R _DS(on) and the channel leakage current I _{Ds, leak.} Electrically active defects related to stress processes were identified by the DTLS method.