A novel method to determine bias-dependent source and drain parasitic series resistances in AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors

•A novel method to determine bias-dependent source and drain parasitic series resistances in AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors has been proposed.•The physical mechanism that causes Rs and Rd to vary with bias voltage is studied.•The bias voltage can affect the magnitude of Rs and Rd by affecting the optical phonon temperature and the intensity of the inverse piezoelectric effect. The AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) with T-gate that suitable for high frequency applications were fabricated. A novel method to extract the bias-dependent source and drain parasitic series resistances (Rs and Rd) of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs is proposed. By analyzing the distributed capacitance and current generator network in the velocity saturated regions of the AlGaN/GaN HEMTs, a new restriction relationship between small-signal equivalent circuit elements is found. The Rs and Rd can be determined under active bias through wideband S-parameter measurements, which can better reflect the physical mechanism of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs under normal operation. The S-parameters and extrinsic transconductance calculated based the small-signal equivalent circuit element values extracted by the method proposed in this paper are very consistent with the experimental values, which reflects the accuracy of this element extraction method. In this paper, the physical mechanism that causes Rs and Rd to vary with bias voltage is also studied. This study has a deeper insight into the bias-dependence of Rs and Rd, which modifies the understanding for physical mechanisms of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs. The research results provide new ideas for establishing small-signal equivalent circuit models containing more physical effects and is of great significance to GaN-based integrated circuit design.