The Failure Analysis And Evaluation Method Of GaAs MMIC

GaAs MMIC was widely used in many field for it's high performance in microwave, such as telecommunications, satellite, radar, and so on. A study of the failure mechanism and rapid evaluation method of GaAs MMIC has been presented in this paper. The analysis of I-V characteristic and microstructure shows that the failure of device results from the gate sinking and ohmic contact degradation. The device I-V characteristic curves' shangqiao at high temperature while not at low temperature shows the hot electrons effect at high temperature result in this.Active devices control the failure characteristic of GaAs MMIC,the passive devices are very significant in the sense that they are responsible for the early failure of the circuits, but it can be eliminate by improve the technology or by screening. The anti-burnout character was improved obviously after the metallization be made more thick.The analysis on the GaAs MMIC metallization which burnout has been occured proved that the main reason was that the metallization is too thin to endure the mechanical stress, so the collapse will trigger the circuits burnout.Because the routine test method could not meet the requirement of modern devices, the author put forward a new test method called Temperature Ramp Measurement (TRM). By this method, we can observe dynamically the whole process of devices' degradation, so the estimation value of life and failure active energy can be extracted accurately. Both electric stress and thermal stress had been considered comprehensively during the calculating process. According to the failure criterion, the temperature was chosen correspondingly. Then using the energy integral way, the life of device can be deduced. Comparing to the routine experiment, this method need much less samples, much less test time, much lower cost, instead give much higher efficiency. The results have comparability with the results of the routine test method. By this experiment, a new method of rapid evaluation to microelectronic device has been established.