| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
MS&T24: Materials Science & Technology
|
| Symposium
|
Advanced Characterization of Materials for Nuclear, Radiation, and Extreme Environments V
|
| Presentation Title |
An In-Situ Transmission Electron Microscopy Study on the Synergistic Effects of Heating and Biasing of AlGaN/GaN High Electron Mobility Transistors |
| Author(s) |
Nahid Sultan Al-Mamun, Aman Haque |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Nahid Sultan Al-Mamun |
| Abstract Scope |
High temperature operating environment is known to adversely affect the reliability of AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs). Degradation studies typically involve post-mortem visualization of the device cross-section to identify failure mechanisms. In this study, we present an in-situ technique by operating the transistor inside the transmission electron microscope (TEM) for real time observation of the defects and failure. The results indicate that the high temperature operation promotes nucleation of new defects in addition to the propagation of existing defects, which degrades the performance of the device even at low biasing conditions. The gate Schottky contact is found to be the most vulnerable region at elevated temperature. The high-resolution TEM imaging along with geometric phase analysis reveals the evolution of defect clusters, such as dislocations networks, stacking faults, and amorphized regions, in the AlGaN and GaN layers, which increases the lattice strain leading to catastrophic failure at elevated temperature. |