Improvement in electrostatic discharge robustness of a gallium-nitride-based flip-chip high-electron mobility transistor with a metal–insulator–metal capacitor structure

We report the improvement in the electrostatic discharge (ESD) characteristics of an AlGaN/GaN high-electron mobility transistor (HEMT) with a metal–insulator–metal (MIM) capacitor structure on an aluminum nitride (AlN) flip-chip (FC) submount. Compared with an HEMT without an FC, the measured results for the HEMT with an FC revealed improvements of 25% and 150% under drain-to-source and gate-to-source ESD stress, respectively. This improvement can be attributed to an additional stress-bypassing path formed in the MIM structure on the AlN FC submount that allowed the flow of ESD current and supported the charge by using additional capacitance.