Published October 21, 2021 | Submitted + Published
Journal Article Open

Characterization of self-heating in cryogenic high electron mobility transistors using Schottky thermometry

Abstract

Cryogenic low-noise amplifiers based on high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) are widely used in applications such as radio astronomy, deep space communications, and quantum computing. Consequently, the physical mechanisms governing the microwave noise figure are of practical interest. In particular, the magnitude of the contribution of thermal noise from the gate at cryogenic temperatures remains unclear owing to a lack of experimental measurements of thermal resistance under these conditions. Here, we report measurements of gate junction temperature and thermal resistance in a HEMT at cryogenic and room temperatures using Schottky thermometry. At temperatures ∼20 K, we observe a nonlinear trend of thermal resistance vs power that is consistent with heat dissipation by phonon radiation. Based on this finding, we consider heat transport by phonon radiation at the low-noise bias and liquid helium temperatures and estimate that the thermal noise from the gate is several times larger than previously assumed owing to self-heating. We conclude that without improvements in thermal management, self-heating results in a practical lower limit for microwave noise figure of HEMTs at cryogenic temperatures.

Additional Information

© 2021 Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing. Submitted: 14 July 2021; Accepted: 29 September 2021; Published Online: 21 October 2021. A.Y.C., B.G., and A.J.M. were supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1911220. I.E. was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE-1745301. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. J.K. and A.J.M. were supported by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory PDRDF under Grant No. 107614-20AW0099. Experimental work was performed at the Cahill Radio Astronomy Laboratory (CRAL) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant No. 80NM0018D0004). Data Availability: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Attached Files

Published - 155107_1_online.pdf

Submitted - 2105-11571.pdf

Files

155107_1_online.pdf
Files (4.4 MB)
Name Size Download all
md5:ebcd13196f4865f8f2f06b0367f5016f
2.1 MB Preview Download
md5:19b0d0ca5026eaf474df8b31521fd879
2.3 MB Preview Download

Additional details

Created:
October 5, 2023
Modified:
October 24, 2023