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RF Characterization of GaN Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor in the Nano Regime
Abstract
GaN HBT has several advantages over silicon and other III-V compound semiconductor materials. GaN based devices possess higher breakdown fields, better thermal conductivity and higher saturation velocities than alternative material systems. Due to its larger band gap, which translates to a high breakdown field, GaN is a promising candidate for high voltage operating devices. This material system is very much perfect for high-power RF applications. GaN HBTs offer important potential advantages over HFETs in terms of high transconductance, controlled linearity, freedom from surface trapping effects and controllable tradeoff of between unity current gain cut-off frequency (ft) and breakdown voltage. For high power applications, higher breakdown voltage and ft is necessary. Thus GaN material system will have superior performance over other material systems. In this paper, we analyze the performance of GaN HBTs for analog/RF applications. Improvements in terms of early voltage, intrinsic gain and junction breakdown voltage are noticed. Moreover ft and fmax for these devices show significant improvement making these devices an able candidate for future RF applications.
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References
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