Research On The Damage Mechanism Of The AlGaAs/GaAs HEMT Induced By The Eletromagnetic Pulse

The electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a transient electromagnetic phenomena,which has the characteristics of high electric field strength, short rise time, large energycarried and so on. Therefore, EMP is a serious threat to the electronic systems andelectronic components. High electron mobility transistor (HEMT), which is a newgeneration of microwave and millimeter wave devices, has been developed for tenyears. Now it is used as a core component of microwave mixer, oscillator andbroadband traveling-wave amplifier. Thus it is necessary to study the EMP failuremechanism of the HEMT devices from the theoretical aspect.By using the device simulator software of ISE TCAD, this paper creates asimulation model of AlGaAs/GaAs HEMT. Based on this simulation model, this paperanalyzes the damage effect and mechanism of this device induced by the step pulsesignal, and the sinusoidal signal respectively. By analyzing the two-dimensionalsimulation results, it is found that in both signals inputted, the thermal damage zone ofthe device is the area between the gate and drain surface. When the injected voltagesignal is step pulse, this paper obtains the relationship between the energy threshold ofdevice damage and the burning time by numerical calculation. In addition, the paperanalyzes the influence of different external circuit to the device damage effect. Whenthe injected voltage signal is sinusoidal signal, it is found that the device is more likelyto be heated or burned in the negative half-cycle.The research in this paper provides a certain theoretical basis to the damageassessment and hardening of the HEMT devices induced by the electromagnetic pulse,and also lays a good foundation to the theory and experimental study of relateddirection in the future work.