Investigation of high performance Edge Lifted Capacitors reliability for GaAs and GaN MMIC technology

•ELC capacitor with Metal 1 as the bottom and Metal 2 as the contact metal layers.•A SPAN layer is formed to provide mechanical support for the air bridge of the ELC.•Lower R.I. nitride film exhibits the lowest leakage current and highest VBD behavior.•ELC exhibits better ESD, TDDB and bHAST reliability results than MIM capacitor. This paper reports extensive investigations of Edge Lifted Capacitors (ELC) and standard metal–insulator–metal (MIM) capacitors with different refractive index and thickness of Silicon Nitride (Si3N4) dielectric films. The wafer-level electrical measurements reveal size dependence of capacitances and breakdown voltages. Physical characterization was performed using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to understand intrinsic properties of the studied films and failure-related cross sections were used to predict possible leakage mechanisms. Reliability testing of Human Body Model (HBM) and Machine Model (MM) electrostatic discharge (ESD), time-dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB), and biased high temperature accelerated stress testing (bHAST) were performed and will be reviewed for GaAs and GaN monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) applications.