Status of Reliability of GaN-Based Heterojunction Field Effect Transistors
Status of Reliability of GaN-Based Heterojunction Field Effect Transistors
复制标题
GaN基异质结场效应晶体管的可靠性现状
DOI：
10.1109/jproc.2010.2044858
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发表时间：
2010
影响因子：
20.6
通讯作者：
H. Morkoç
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
J. Leach;H. Morkoç
GaN基异质结场效应晶体管（HFET）将在通信和雷达设备中使用的微波和毫米波发射机和接收机的高功率、高频军事和商业领域发挥重要作用。事实上，在X波段（7-12.5 GHz）及更高频段工作的设备已经上市，并拥有令人印象深刻的性能。现在已经将晶体质量提高到可靠性[表示为平均故障时间（MTTF）]超过1000万小时的水平，现在需要关注的是哪些物理机制导致退化是最重要的，以及现有的退化如何加速随后的退化，最终导致器件故障。现有数据表明，并非来自同一晶片的所有器件都显示出类似的寿命，并且基于三温度外推的寿命预测报告的激活能的广泛分布令人不安。如果我们希望对设备寿命做出一致、可靠的预测，特别是当设备在射频（RF）操作中被推到接近其极限时，需要做更多的工作来表征设备的长期稳定性，并且必须开发新的故障机制物理模型。
GaN-based heterojunction field effect transistors (HFETs) will play major roles in the high-power, high-frequency military and commercial arenas for microwave and millimeter wave transmitters and receivers used in communications and radar devices. In fact, devices operative in the X-band (7-12.5 GHz) and beyond are already at market and boast quite impressive performances. Having improved the crystal quality now to levels where the reliability [expressed as mean time to failure (MTTF)] is claimed to exceed ten million hours, the work now needs to focus on which of the physical mechanisms responsible for degradation are the most important, and how the existing degradation accelerates subsequent degradation, ultimately resulting in device failure. Available data show that not all devices from the same wafer show similar longevity and the wide spread of activation energies reported for three-temperature extrapolation-based predictions of the lifetime are troubling. If we hope to make consistent, reliable predictions of device lifetimes, particularly when the devices are being pushed in radio-frequency (RF) operation to near their limits, more work will need to be done in characterizing the long term stability of the devices, and new physical models for the failure mechanisms will have to be developed.