Short-Circuit Study in Medium-Voltage GaN Cascodes, p-GaN HEMTs, and GaN MISHEMTs

Abstract

This paper studies by experimentation and physics-based simulation the Short-Circuit (SC) capability of several normally-off 600–650 V Gallium Nitride High-Electron-Mobility Transistors (GaN HEMTs): cascodes, p-GaN, and GaN Metal–Insulator–Semiconductor HEMTs (MISHEMTs). As a result, cascodes present the worst SC ruggedness. By contrast, p-GaN gate HEMTs and MISHEMTs provide a higher SC capability thanks to their strong drain current reduction. In addition, a valuable state-of-the-art about all commercially available technologies is also provided, which demonstrates that current GaN devices do not allow SC capability.