Field Plates Effects on the GaN HEMT Device for High Power and Speed Applications
Abstract
GaN devices are appropriate for power applications because of the unique material features of GaN, which provide GaN HEMTs with low R_on and high breakdown voltage (VB). Field Plates (FP) are used to improve the efficiency of a conventional HEMT for power applications while maintaining the device's dimensions. Field Plate (FP) technology has been shown to improve HEMT power performance significantly. The HEMT's break-down voltage has been increased as part of the improvement. Therefore, using Silvaco-ATLAS two-dimensional simulation, the principle and compute performance of the standard HEMT and the HEMT with the field plate (FP) have been explored in this paper. The results obtained may lead the path to an improved and efficient approach to the production of high-power devices that can be used in power electronics applications. The breakdown voltage of the device rises from 44 V of the device without FP to 125 V at SFP, 402 V at T-Gate, 429 V at both GFP and SFP and finally to 515 V at GFP by choosing the right field plate structure and field plate length. The result shows an excellent ability to improve the GaN HEMT for power applications by using different types of field plats without increasing the dimension of the simulated device. Also, the single-peak of the electric field is replaced with multi-peaks and the distribution of the electric field will be uniform by using a field plate.
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