Events

A New Approach to SEE Testing of eGaN HEMTs Presented by: Shengke Zhang, Ph.D., Manager of Failure Analysis and Reliability at EPC

Talk Date: Thursday, October 8, 2020, 5:30 p.m. EDT

GaN HEMTs have gained major traction for high-reliability applications owing to their intrinsic radiation hardness and superior circuit performance. Until recently, single event effects (SEE) testing on GaN HEMTs has been conducted primarily with heavy ions impinging on the active side of the device. This is due to the fact that the thickness of Si substrate on the backside (~680um) exceeds the nominal range of common heavy ion beams (i.e. 15MeV/u Au ion). Recently, Efficient Power Conversion Corp. (EPC) has developed a new SEE test methodology, allowing for ions to access the active region from the backside. This is enabled by completely removing the Si substrate using EPC’s proprietary etching technology. Based on detailed SRIM and SEUSS (control software for the Cyclotron Institute TAMU Radiation Effects Testing Facility) simulation results, we demonstrate that the backside approach can achieve identical LET at the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in the GaN layer as compared to the conventional front or active side method. In fact, the backside approach can achieve the same LET with significantly lower ion beam energy. To validate the simulations, we conducted both front side and back side SEE testing on EPC’s 300V developmental eGaN HEMTs using 15MeV/u Au ion at Texas A&M University. Both approaches yielded similar results.

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