Experimental and Simulation Study on the Electrical Characteristics of Proton-irradiated AlGaN/GaN HEMT

In this study, we conducted an irradiation experiment using protons with 5 MeV energy and a fluence of 5 × 10¹³ cm⁻² to analyze the effects on AlGaN/GaN high electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs). After proton irradiation, the on-resistance (R_on) value increased by 57%, the on-state current (I_on) decreased by 26.78%, and the off-state current (I_off) increased by 89.63%. Despite these changes in I_on and I_off, there was no significant change in the threshold voltage (V_t). This indicates that the two-dimensional electronic gas (2DEG) density, which determines V_t did not sustain significant damage. The degradation in device characteristics was attributed to other factors, which were analyzed through a resistance-based equation. Additionally, we performed simulation fitting to complete a quantitative cause analysis. We believe that our findings will contribute to preliminary verification research for high-reliability experiments, such as space and aviation semiconductors.