A STUDY OF HOT-ELECTRON DEGRADATION EFFECTS IN PSEUDOMORPHIC HEMTS

In this work we report on hot-electron stress experiments performed on commercial AlGaAs/InGaAs/GaAs pseudomorphic HEMTs. The stress cycles induce a permanent increase of the gate-drain breakdown voltage (break down walkout). Different characterization techniques are applied to th e devices under test, consistently indicating that the physical mechan ism underlying walkout is the build-up of negative charge in the regio n between the gate and drain. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.