EAAI Journal 2026 Journal Article
Autoencoder: An efficient inverse design method for gallium nitride high electron mobility transistor structures
- Yan Pang
- Meilan Hao
- Shu Wei
- Lina Yu
- Jufeng Han
- Min Wu
- Hong Qin
- Weijun Li
Autoencoders are artificial neural networks widely used for feature extraction and data reconstruction, and can also be leveraged for device and material structure design. In gallium nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) inverse design, the mapping from target radio-frequency (RF) metrics to geometric parameters is often non-unique, meaning that multiple distinct structures can achieve similar performance. This one-to-many nature makes deterministic inverse regression unstable. Motivated by this challenge, this paper presents an autoencoder-based inverse design approach for GaN HEMT structures that learns the relationship between device geometry and two key RF metrics: cut-off frequency ( f T ) and maximum oscillation frequency ( f max ). The proposed method enables efficient generation of candidate GaN HEMT designs that match specified RF targets, using technology computer-aided design (TCAD) simulations to generate and label the training data. The model predicts four structural parameters, including gate–source spacing, gate length, gate field-plate length, and passivation-layer thickness. Experimental results show that the proposed framework can reliably generate structures consistent with the target specifications. The average relative error is 2. 64% for f T and 2. 67% for f max. Compared with direct inverse regression baselines, the autoencoder-based framework exhibits more stable training behavior and alleviates slow convergence or training failures caused by the non-uniqueness of the inverse mapping. In our implementation, the method can generate a candidate structure for a given RF target within a few milliseconds (ms), substantially reducing computational cost and providing an effective route to accelerate GaN HEMT device design.