DC, LF DISPERSION AND HF CHARACTERIZATION OF SHORT-TIME STRESSED INP BASED LM-HEMTS

InP based LM-HEMTs are stressed at room temperature in a minute time-f rame. Depending on the applied DC bias, various failure mechanisms are favorised. Their influence on the device characteristics is measured and analysed. A significant change in the DC and HF parameters has bee n noticed when stressed in the impact ionization region, which is not recoverable. However, after stress in the avalanche region only the ga te leakage current increased and this is recoverable after a few minut es. During stress in both regions, the gate current I-gs and the drain current I-ds vary on a logaritmic time scale. This enlightens the imp ortance of possible influence of standard on-wafer DC and HF character izations on the device performance. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Scienc e Ltd