Gate leakage current sensing for in situ temperature monitoring of p-GaN gate HEMTs

In this paper, an effective, yet simple, methodology for the temperature monitoring of voltage-driven p-GaN HEMTs based on gate leakage current sensing is presented. The proposed solution has been verified by SPICE electrothermal simulations and experiments on commercial devices within and out of safe operating area (SOA). Moreover, the monitoring circuit can be effectively adopted for commercially available normally-off p-GaN HEMTs with no need of modifying the recommended gate driver circuit.