Abstract
The AlGaN/GaN materials with a wide band gap, high electron mobility, and high breakdown voltage are suitable for manufacturing high-power and high-frequency electronic devices. In this study, metal Schottky contact electrodes of different dimensions are prepared on AlGaN/GaN wafers to fabricate metal–semiconductor–metal (MSM) varactors. Voltage-dependent capacitance and breakdown voltages of the varactors are measured and studied. The corresponding breakdown mechanisms of varactors with different electrode gaps are proposed. Furthermore, an anti-surge application using GaN-based MSM varactors in a signal transmission module is demonstrated, and its surge suppression capability is shown. We believe that our study will be beneficial in developing surge protection circuits for RF applications.
Highlights
The advent of the Internet of Things has placed difficult frequency and power requirements on electronic devices
2DEG MSM varactors as the anti-surge components connected in series between the antenna and the backend circuits, as shown in Figure 1 [16], and we have demonstrated that this design protects the back-end high-electron-mobility field-effect transistors (HEMT) element from electrostatic discharge (ESD) [17]
In addition to the normal-sized varactors mentioned above, we reduced the sizes of all varactors to one-fifth by the exposure-scaling method
Summary
The advent of the Internet of Things has placed difficult frequency and power requirements on electronic devices. GaN has been widely used in high-frequency and high-power applications It has a wide band gap (3.4 eV), high electron mobility, and high breakdown voltage [1]. TVS diodes and MOVs have short response time, but for a single component, the shunt ability is relatively limited This cannot be enhanced because the parasitic capacitance will be too high to be used for high-frequency circuits. The development of related components using AlGaN/GaN epitaxial structure materials with 2DEG to protect the GPS instruments has a very high potential. In this regard, investigation into the influence of the capacitance conversion ratio and breakdown voltage of varactors is very important.
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