GaN Hemt Degradation induced by Reverse Gate Bias Stress

GaN High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMTs) represent the most attractive, and perhaps viable, solution for tackling the needs of high power and high efficiency microwave and millimeterwave power amplifiers. Their impressive capability of manage power levels which are tenths times higher than those achieved by other semiconductor devices has been demonstrated by various authors. Nevertheless, there is a strong need of investigating their long term reliability due to the relative commercial immaturity of this semiconductor technology. Decrease in output power and power added efficiency as a consequence of device knee-walkout and gate current degradation are amongst the most deleterious effects that can arise during device operation