Thermal simulations of III/V HEMTs

Thermal management is a key problem for semiconductor RF-components due to the reduction of chip and device performance by thermal effects. The simulation of devices at various operating temperatures and the inclusion of self-heating effects in the simulation are therefore crucial for the optimization of devices with respect to chip and system performance as well as for reliability concerns. We present investigations of GaAs based high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) using the two-dimensional device simulator MINIMOS-NT. This includes the critical influence of the contact modeling and findings for realistic thermal boundary conditions. Temperature dependent DC transfer characteristics, RF-simulation results, and comparisons to measurements of state of the art HEMTs are given.