Study of the effects of GaN buffer layer quality on the dc characteristics of AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors

Journal Article · Tue Apr 21 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology. B, Nanotechnology and Microelectronics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1116/1.4918715· OSTI ID:1265477

Ahn, Shihyun ^[1]; Zhu, Weidi ^[1]; Dong, Chen ^[1]; Le, Lingcong ^[1]; Hwang, Ya-Hsi ^[1]; Kim, Byung-Jae ^[1]; Ren, Fan ^[1]; Pearton, Stephen J. ^[2]; Lind, Aaron G. ^[2]; Jones, Kevin S. ^[3]; Kravchenko, I. I. ^[4]; Zhang, Ming-Lan ^[5]

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1. Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States). Dept. of Chemical Engineering
2. Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States). Dept. of Material Science and Engineering
3. Department of Material Science and Engineering, Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States). Dept. of Material Science and Engineering
4. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Center for Nanophase Materials Science (CNMS)
5. Hebei Univ. of Technology, Tianjing (China). Det. of Electronic Science and Technology

Here we studied the effect of buffer layer quality on dc characteristics of AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility (HEMTs). AlGaN/GaN HEMT structures with 2 and 5 μm GaN buffer layers on sapphire substrates from two different vendors with the same Al concentration of AlGaN were used. The defect densities of HEMT structures with 2 and 5 μm GaN buffer layer were 7 × 10⁹ and 5 × 10⁸ cm^₋2, respectively, as measured by transmission electron microscopy. There was little difference in drain saturation current or in transfer characteristics in HEMTs on these two types of buffer. However, there was no dispersion observed on the nonpassivated HEMTs with 5 μm GaN buffer layer for gate-lag pulsed measurement at 100 kHz, which was in sharp contrast to the 71% drain current reduction for the HEMT with 2 μm GaN buffer layer.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC)
• Grant/Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725; ECCS-1445720; 1-11-1-0020
• OSTI ID: 1265477
• Journal Information: Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology. B, Nanotechnology and Microelectronics, Vol. 33, Issue 3; ISSN 2166-2746
• Publisher: American Vacuum Society/AIP
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE