A Quasi-Physical Compact Large-Signal Model for AlGaN/GaN HEMTs

• Published in: IEEE transactions on microwave theory and techniques Vol. 65; no. 12; pp. 5113 - 5122
• Main Authors: Wen, Zhang, Xu, Yuehang, Chen, Yongbo, Tao, Hongqi, Ren, Chunjiang, Lu, Haiyan, Wang, Zhensheng, Zheng, Weibin, Zhang, Bin, Chen, Tangsheng, Gao, Tao, Xu, Ruimin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.12.2017; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Aluminum gallium nitride; Aluminum gallium nitrides; Ambient temperature; Circuit design; Electric potential; Electron mobility; Gallium nitride; GaN high-electron mobility transistors (HEMTs); Heating; HEMTs; High electron mobility transistors; Integrated circuit modeling; large-signal modeling; Mathematical model; Mathematical models; MODFETs; Potential theory; scalable; Semiconductor devices; surface-potential; Temperature effects; Transistors; Trapping; trapping effects; Wide band gap semiconductors; zone division
• ISSN: 0018-9480; 1557-9670
• DOI: 10.1109/TMTT.2017.2765326

This paper presents an accurate quasi-physical compact large-signal model for GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs). The drain current I ds expression is acquired by combining the zone division method and the surface potential theory. The proposed I ds model only contains 19 empirical parameters, with self-heating, ambient temperature and trapping effects considered. The self-heating effects are modeled by a polynomial function of temperature and gate voltage for the critical electric field E c . And the ambient temperature effects are modeled by modifying pinchoff voltage and maximal electron saturated velocity. The trapping effects are considered with an effective gate-source voltage method. Moreover, taking the advantage of good physical meaning, the proposed I ds model is scalable. In house 0.15-μm GaN HEMTs with different sizes are used to validate the model by dc I-V over a wide ambient temperature range, pulsed I-V, multibias S-parameters up to 50 GHz and multibias large-signal characteristics at f 0 = 30 GHz. The good results show that the proposed quasiphysical zone division model is useful for millimeter-wave GaN HEMTs development and circuit design.