Investigation on the Cumulative Degradation in p-GaN Gate HEMTs Under Synergistic Electrical Stress and Heavy Ion Irradiation

Lin, D ORCID: 0009-0000-2253-5100, Zheng, X ORCID: 0000-0002-9410-3849, Yue, S ORCID: 0000-0002-0904-4857, Yi, L ORCID: 0009-0003-4577-7374, Wang, X ORCID: 0000-0002-0943-1427, Zhang, H, Liu, K ORCID: 0000-0002-5269-7175, Jia, M ORCID: 0000-0002-3066-9755, Wang, Y ORCID: 0000-0003-0606-5588, Lv, L ORCID: 0000-0001-5028-4492, Cao, Y ORCID: 0009-0001-8987-0154, Zhang, W ORCID: 0000-0003-4600-7382, Hu, P, Liu, J ORCID: 0000-0002-1639-7239, Ma, X ORCID: 0000-0002-1331-6253 and Hao, Y ORCID: 0000-0002-8081-2919 (2026) Investigation on the Cumulative Degradation in p-GaN Gate HEMTs Under Synergistic Electrical Stress and Heavy Ion Irradiation. IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, 73 (99). ISSN 0018-9383

Preview

Text TED-2026-05-1268-Accepted.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

In this work, the synergistic effects of electrical stress and heavy-ion irradiation on the cumulative degradation of p-GaN gate AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) are systematically investigated. The devices were irradiated with Ta ions (LET = 76.3 MeV ⋅ cm2/mg) under the drain bias slightly lower than the single-event burnout (SEB) threshold voltage ( VSEB) . The saturated drain current ( IDsat) exhibits a pronounced cumulative degradation with increasing heavy-ion fluence under off-state electrical stress. Electrical characterization results show that neither electrical stress nor irradiation alone induces significant degradation, whereas their synergistic effect leads to severe performance degradation. Furthermore, analyses based on low-frequency noise (LFN) and capacitance deep-level transient spectroscopy ( C -DLTS) reveal a substantial increase in trap density in the p-GaN layer after irradiation. The increased traps within the p-GaN layer degrade carrier transport in the channel, mainly through enhanced Coulomb scattering and mobility reduction, accompanied by a partial reduction in the effective 2DEG density.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Generative adversarial networks; HEMTs; Ions; Radiation effects; Degradation; Electrons; Human factors; Stress; Electric fields; Modeling; Cumulative degradation; GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs); heavy-ion irradiation; p-GaN gate; 40 Engineering; 4009 Electronics, Sensors and Digital Hardware; 0906 Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Applied Physics; 4009 Electronics, sensors and digital hardware
Subjects:	T Technology > TK Electrical engineering. Electronics. Nuclear engineering
Divisions:	Engineering and Built Environment
Publisher:	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Date of acceptance:	5 April 2026
Date of first compliant Open Access:	9 September 2026
Date Deposited:	08 Sep 2026 12:38
Last Modified:	09 Sep 2026 00:50
DOI or ID number:	10.1109/TED.2026.3714370
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/29341

View Item