DFG Champagne

Gallium Nitride High Electron Mobility Transistors (GaN-HEMTs), are considered a promising way to surpass the fundamental limitations of silicon-based power transistors and realize more compact as well as efficient power circuits. Also due to the ever-increasing proliferation of such power transistors, two physics-based standard models for modeling GaN HEMTs have recently been proposed by the Compact Modeling Council (CMC): the Advanced Spice Model for HEMTs (ASM-HEMT) from IIT Kanpur and the MIT Virtual Source GaN-High Voltage (MVSG-HV) from MIT. However, due to their complex structure and complicated fabrication, GaN-HEMTs are prone to much more pronounced parasitic effects compared to the established silicon technology, which are caused by the trapping of charge carriers at crystal defects, so-called charge carrier traps. These trapping effects can cause a degradation of the otherwise very advantageous electrical properties. However, in the existing models for the simulation of GaN HEMTs, these effects are only considered in a rather rudimentary way or even not at all.

The goal of the DFG Champagne project (Characterization and modeling of trapping-related effects in gallium-nitride power transistors) is the comprehensive characterization of trapping-induced parasitic effects within GaN HEMTs for power electronics tasks using novel measurement techniques, as well as the generation of a physics-based model for the simulation of such effects in circuit simulators.

Extension of ASM HEMT Model with Trapping Effects in GaN Power Devices

A Novel Approach for the Modeling of the Dynamic ON-State Resistance of GaN-HEMTs

The project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and takes place in cooperation with the University of Cottbus-Senftenberg in Cottbus/ Brandenburg, and the Russel Berrie Nanotechnology Institute of the Technion in Haifa/ Israel.