Document Type

Article

Original Publication Date

2009

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Applied Physics Letters

Volume

95

Issue

22

DOI of Original Publication

10.1063/1.3271183

Comments

Originally published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3271183

Date of Submission

April 2015

Abstract

We report on high electric field stress measurements at room temperature on InAlN/AlN/GaN heterostructure field effect transistor structures. The degradation rate as a function of the average electron density in the GaN channel (as determined by gated Hall bar measurements for the particular gate biases used), has a minimum for electron densities around 1×1013 cm−2, and tends to follow the hot phonon lifetime dependence on electron density. The observations are consistent with the buildup of hot longitudinal optical phonons and their ultrafast decay at about the same electron density in the GaN channel. In part because they have negligible group velocity, the build up of these hot phonons causes local heating, unless they decay rapidly to longitudinal acoustic phonons, and this is likely to cause defect generation which is expected to be aggravated by existing defects. These findings call for modified approaches in modeling device degradation.

Rights

Leach, J.H., Zhu, C.Y., Wu, M., et al. Degradation in InAlN/GaN-based heterostructure field effect transistors: Role of hot phonons. Applied Physics Letters, 95, 223504 (2009). Copyright © 2009 AIP Publishing LLC.

Is Part Of

VCU Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Share

COinS