Pulsed I /V and S -parameters measurement system for isodynamic characterization of power GaN HEMT transistors

Abstract

This article presents a system capable of performing isodynamic I/V and S‐parameter measurements. It is focused on the necessary characterization signals, laboratory equipment, and pulser (power head). Proper biasing waveforms are developed and used to extract accurate nonlinear measurements that take into account the frequency dispersive phenomena, namely, the drain lag and temperature rise observed in GaN HEMTs. The pulser can drive high power devices (120 V and 45 A) for very fast and accurate pulses (widths between 300 and 800 ns). As validation, a commercial 15 W GaN device (CGH27015P) from Wolfspeed was characterized using this setup. The consistency between the obtained pulsed I/V curves and others obtained by the integration of the small signal transcondutance (gm) and output conductance (gds) proves that the presented system is capable of performing isodynamic characterization of power transistors.

A nonlinear empirical I/V model for GaAs and GaN FETs suitable to design power amplifiers

“…It is worth commenting that thermal effects and traps are not considered in this work. Besides, the I/V pulsed data are not isodynamic I/V 35, 36 because we currently do not have a test bench for making these measurements. However, our main interest is to highlight the importance of an accurate I/V model for designing microwave circuits like power amplifiers, even when it does not consider the thermal or traps effects.…”

A Reconfigurable Setup for the On-Wafer Characterization of the Dynamic RON of 600 V GaN Switches at Variable Operating Regimes

“…This parameter is often described in the literature as the duration of the trap-filling pulse. The dependence of the trap-induced degradation to the duration of the trap-filling pulse has been investigated in the literature, sometimes with observed opposite behaviors depending on the duration scale of T Block [15,[26][27][28]. For switching mode power converter applications, a dependency of R DS,ON on T Block implies additional dependency of the device performance versus the variation of the duty cycle.…”

Ultra‐wide bandgap Al 0. 1 Ga 0 . 9 N double channel HEMT for RF applications

“…10 Pulsed I-V and S-parameter measurement systems developed for isodynamic characterization for GaN HEMTs. 11 In the field of high-power switching, high off-state breakdown voltage (V BR ) and minimum ON-state resistance (R ON ) are desirable for a HEMT to handle highpower density with minimum power dissipation. 12 Moreover, for high-power microwave applications the desirable parameters are high breakdown voltage (V BR ) and higher cut-off frequency (F T ) in order to deliver more output power at high frequency.…”

“…Empowered GaN HEMT models are developed by G. Crupi et al for power amplifier design 10 . Pulsed I‐V and S‐parameter measurement systems developed for isodynamic characterization for GaN HEMTs 11 …”