Self-heating and traps effects on the drain transient response of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs

The effects of self-heating and traps on the drain current transient responses of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs are studied by 2D numerical simulation. The variation of the drain current simulated by the drain turn-on pulses has been analyzed. Our results show that temperature is the main factor for the drain current lag. The time that the drain current takes to reach a steady state depends on the thermal time constant, which is 80 μs in this case. The dynamics of the trapping of electron and channel electron density under drain turn-on pulse voltage are discussed in detail, which indicates that the accepter traps in the buffer are the major reason for the current collapse when the electric field significantly changes. The channel electron density has been shown to increase as the channel temperature rises. (semiconductor devices)