Crosstalk in monolithic GaN-on-Silicon power electronic devices

We report the presence of "crosstalk" in monolithic GaN-on-Silicon power diodes through simple and systematic electrical measurements. The finding is beneficial to the performance assessment of monolithically integrated power electronic circuits based on GaN-on-Silicon technology. Our approach consists of evaluating the impact on the steady state device electrical characteristics by inducing a perturbation bias on an electrode of an isolated device in the vicinity. It has been observed that the behaviour is primarily responsive to a perturbation bias of negative polarity and effectively manifests itself as reduced forward conductivity in devices. The impact of biasing an electrode of a neighbouring isolated device under floating substrate conditions and the impact of only biasing the Silicon substrate appear to be equivalent, indicating that the former behaviour may be due to the capacitively induced potential of the otherwise electrically unbiased/floating Silicon substrate. Grounding the Silicon substrate appears to mitigate the impact of the crosstalk effects under static conditions. Basic structural details of the devices under evaluation and preliminary results of the study are reported. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.