Reliability and failure physics of GaN HEMT, MIS-HEMT and p-gate HEMTs for power switching applications: Parasitic effects and degradation due to deep level effects and time-dependent breakdown phenomena

Recent studies on the reliability of power Gallium Nitride (GaN) High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMTs), Metal Insulator Semiconductor-HEMTs (MISHEMTs) and p-gate HEMTs are reviewed. When submitted to high electric field values, gate and insulating dielectrics as well as defective epitaxial layers are prone to time dependent breakdown mechanisms, charge trapping phenomena and generation of deep levels or interface states. This may originate degradation effects such as threshold voltage shifts and gate-drain or drain-source catastrophic breakdown. For most mechanisms, time to failure follows a Weibull distribution and lifetime extrapolation is possible using Arrhenius law and common electric field acceleration models.