Driving the Gate of a EPC Space Rad Hard eGaN® HEMT Transistor

High reliability, radiation-tolerant eGaN HEMT devices represent an exciting development for the space circuit design community. The transistors offer the designer a vastly improved CISS · RDS(on) figure-of-merit (FOM) as well as much faster switching times when compared to conventional silicon MOSFETs. However, being a new technology, there are still some “institutional” concerns about this technology. The primary area of concern for the designer new to this technology in the application of a rad hard eGaN HEMT transistor is its limited gate-source voltage operating range as compared to that of familiar silicon MOSFET devices. Many designers will design to the typical data sheet transfer curves in regards to VGS versus ID. But this practice discounts the effects of Driving the Gate of a EPC Space Rad Hard eGaN® HEMT Transistor aging, temperature, processing, parameter variations such as with transconductance, and the operating stresses presented to the device during its lifetime.