In-Deep Insight into the Extrinsic Capacitance Impact on GaN HEMT Modeling at Millimeter-Wave Band

The extrinsic input and output capacitances of the field effect transistor small-signal equivalent circuit are typically extracted from the low frequency admittance parameters under ‘‘cold’’ pinch-off condition. Despite that, these two capacitances play a significant role also at high frequencies. Intuitively, a first hint of explanation stems from the high frequency reduction of their admittance values connected in parallel to the input and the output of the rest of the equivalent circuit. In particular, the extrinsic capacitances can cause an increase of the real parts of the impedance parameters at high frequencies. This article is aimed at developing an extensive experimental and mathematical analysis based on a comparative study of this behavior for GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) devices up to the millimeter-wave range. The results of this analysis can be applied for estimating the extrinsic capacitances. The main benefit of this modeling technique is that the extrinsic output capacitance can be separated from the intrinsic output capacitance, which can play a significant role especially in case of large devices.