Automatic in-situ measurement of thermal resistance for GaN HEMTs

Abstract

An automatic in-situ technique for thermal resistance measurement based on an electrical method is proposed in this paper. In contrast to the conventional thermal resistance measurement circuits of the electrical method, this method involves direct measurement of the thermal resistance of GaN high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) devices in an operating circuit by introducing a well-matched radio-frequency switching circuit into the operating circuit. The advantage of this method is that the thermal resistance can be measured periodically on the in-situ device without changing the electrical characteristics of the device. Based on this result, the cooling curve of the HEMT device in the power amplifier (PA) circuit is collected and the thermal resistance characteristics of the HEMT are determined via the structure function method. The purpose of this paper is to successfully obtain the thermal resistance of in-situ devices through an automatic in-situ measurement circuit of thermal resistance, and to verify the feasibility of periodic detection of thermal resistance of in-situ devices.