Thermal Investigation of GaAs Microwave Power Transistors

The lower thermal conductivity of gallium arsenide (GaAs) compared to silicon (Si) requires a careful thermal design for optimizing device performance and reliability. In this paper a recently developed thermal simulation tool (TRESCOM II) is applied for investigating the thermal behavior of a heterojunction GaAs power field effect transistor (FET). Main features of the simulation tool are an easy model creation procedure and an efficient numerical solver. Moreover, the tool allows to consider temperature dependent material properties and temperature dependent boundary conditions. The investigation of the thermal behavior of the power transistor has two goals. First goal is to establish the temperature distribution within the active layer of the FET to allow predictions of thermal-electrical interactions. A deeper insight into thermal-electrical interaction will lead to better equivalent circuit models used in electrical circuit design. Due to the fact that reliability of the component is mainly determined by thermal load and induced thermomechanical stress, second goal of this work is to investigate the influence of chip thickness and die bonding variations on the thermal behavior. Thermal response on different power levels is investigated and the influence of chip thickness tolerances and die bonding on the thermal performance of the device is discussed.