Abstract
The MESFET-gate-conductor interruption, often representing a device lifetime limitation, has been characterised by measuring the activation energy Ea and material drift velocity nu B for several types of narrow Al conductors regarding electron wind voiding. The Arrhenius temperature dependence law for current-guided diffusion has been found to hold good and Ea has been measured to be 0.16 eV and 0.14 eV for Al directly on GaAs and for Al on GaAs with a thin intermediate Cr layer, respectively. This result indicates that the presence of a chromium interface is detrimental to the stability and lifetime of Al gate structures.

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