Simulation of temperature effects on GaN MESFET

Since several years ago, semiconductor materials the band gap of which is wide, including Gallium Nitride (GaN) & Silicon Carbide (SiC), have been very promising in the applications of fabricating devices of high power, high temperature and microwave frequency as the characteristics of high breakdown voltages & low thermal generation rates. However, the performance of devices made from these materials is strongly influenced by the ambient temperature. In order to analyze the temperature effects, an analytical physical model is adopted in this paper to determine the temperature-dependent characteristics, including current-voltage characteristic, current-temperature characteristic and saturation electron drift velocity-temperature characteristic, which are also simulated through MATLAB software. Based on these characteristics, the device performance can be anticipated and device structure can be optimized.