Single-Event Effects of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs Under Different Biases

The single-event effects (SEEs) of AlGaN/GaN HEMT devices under off-state, semi-on-state, and on-state are systematically investigated from experiments and TCAD simulations. Experimental results show that heavy ion radiation causes the most serious damage to the devices under the off-state. Three regions of nondestructive, leakage degradation, and catastrophic failures induced by SEE are observed as drain-to-source voltage increases. The simulation results show that the peak electric field is largest under the off-state and the current collection is more significant at high-voltage bias, further confirming the severity of the SEE in the off-state. It has been shown that high single-event transient currents under the off-state can cause permanent damage to the device, leading to an increase in device leakage current.