Experimental Demonstration of an Integrated Bidirectional Gate ESD Protection Structure for p-GaN Power HEMTs
Yajie Xin, Wanjun Chen, Ruize Sun, Fangzhou Wang, Chao Liu, Xiaochuan Deng, Zhaoji Li, Bo Zhang
Abstract
This letter experimentally demonstrates an integrated bidirectional protection structure to improve the p-GaN power HEMTs’ gate ESD reliability. The protection structure comprises an event-triggering p-GaN HEMT, a low-side resistor <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${R}_{\text {L}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> , and a high-side resistor <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${R}_{\text {H}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> . The critical parameters such as transmission line pulsing (TLP) failure current, trigger voltage <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}_{\text {Trig}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and leakage current <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${I}_{\text {leak}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> are evaluated by TLP testing. It is validated that this protection structure can sustain a forward TLP failure current up to 1.42 A (equivalent human body model passing voltage <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}_{\text {HBM}} \approx {2.13}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> kV) and a reverse TLP failure current up to 3.06 A ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}_{\text {HBM}} \approx {4.59}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> kV) without sacrificing the protected device’s performance. In addition, it is verified that the TLP failure current can be adjusted by the event-triggering p-GaN HEMT’s active area and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${R}_{\text {H}}/{R}_{\text {L}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ratio.