Eliana Acurio

Research Abstract

 It is very concerning that almost 10% of the total energy around the world is lost due to the inefficiency of the conversion systems. Therefore, there are many efforts focused on minimizing losses and saving energy in this field. Gallium Nitrite technology emerges as a future successor to Silicon for power electronics applications due to their wide bandgap (3.4eV), high thermal conductivity, high breakdown voltage (3MV/cm) and high electron velocity related to the two-dimensional electron gas channel (2DEG). In spite of the superior attributes of this technology, GaN-base devices also show problems such as normally-on operation, leakage current, current collapse, bias temperature instability, etc. which strongly compromise the electrical reliability for power applications. Hence, the work is focused on studying the physical phenomena behind the failure mechanisms by using different characterization techniques and TCAD simulations in order to improve reliability for energy efficient power applications.