Characterization of single event effect simulation in InP-based High Electron Mobility Transistors

•The characteristics and mechanism of SSE in InP-based HEMT are investigated by TCAD simulations.•The effects of incident location, LET, drain voltage, and different trap density on SEE for InP based HEMT are detailedly investigated.•The peak drain current is reduced by 23.0% for InP based HEMT with a 5 nm In0.6Ga0.4As channel. The characteristics and mechanism of single event effects (SEEs) in InP-based High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMTs) are investigated by technology computer-aided design (TCAD) simulations. The simulation results showed that the transient drain current became the highest after the heavy ion got incident in gate region, which means that the most sensitive location is gate region. With the increase of the linear energy transfer (LET) and drain voltage, the maximum drain current increases approximately linearly. The electric fields got increased with the increase of drain voltage, which led to the increase of the impact ionization rate, then producing more electron-hole pairs. Therefore, the drain current got increased with the increase of drain voltage. Moreover, the drain current become larger with the higher trap density, due to the higher electric field at drain. The thin thickness of InGaAs channel can significantly reduce SEE on the device. And the In mole fraction of InGaAs channel has a small effect on SEE.