Simulation study of single-event burnout in hardened GaN MISFET

Abstract

This paper presents simulation results of a single event burnout (SEB), for a hardened GaN metal-insulator-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MISFET), employing a dual channel p-type buried layer structure (DCP-MISFET). After irradiance with a heavy ion beam, the peak electric field around the gate channel was observed to move towards the drain channel. In addition, the electrons released by the bombardment of heavy ions were also seen to move towards the drain channel, resulting in strong impact ionization at the drain terminal. Compared to the conventional MISFET with field plates (FPC-MISFET), the distribution of electric field and the impact ionization, after heavy ion's exposure around the drain channel are improved in the GaN DCP-MISFET. Because of the second channel, the electrons induced by the heavy ion beam, change their direction. The proposed DCP-MISFET can achieve a better SEB performance than FPC-MISFET. with a heavy ion beam having the linear energy transfer (LET) value of 0.6 pC/μm at x = 7.5 μm striking vertically, the SEB threshold voltages that were obtained in FPC-MISFET and DCP-MISFET were 520 and 920 V, respectively.