Beruflich Dokumente
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DC and RF Characteristics of
AlGaN/GaN/InGaN/GaN
Double-Heterojunction HEMTs
Jie Liu, Student Member, IEEE, Yugang Zhou, Jia Zhu, Yong Cai, Kei May Lau, Fellow, IEEE,
and Kevin J. Chen, Senior Member, IEEE
Manuscript received April 13, 2006; revised August 23, 2006. This work
was supported in part by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council and National
Science Foundation of China under Grant N_HKUST616/04 and a competitive
earmarked Research Grant 611805. The review of this paper was arranged by
Editor Y. Chan.
J. Liu and Y. Cai were with Hong Kong University of Science and
Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong. They are now with Hong Kong Applied
Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) Company Ltd., Kowloon,
Hong Kong.
Y. Zhou was with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,
Kowloon, Hong Kong. He is now with Advanced Packaging Technology Ltd.,
Shanghai, Hong Kong.
J. Zhu is with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon,
Hong Kong.
K. M. Lau and K. J. Chen are with the Department of Electrical and
Electronic Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology,
Kowloon, Hong Kong (e-mail: eekjchen@ust.hk).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TED.2006.887045
I. INTRODUCTION
Fig. 4. DC transfer characteristics of the InGaN-notch DH-HEMTs, compared with the conventional one.
DH-HEMTs are plotted and compared with those of the conventional AlGaN/GaN HEMT in Fig. 4. The gate dimension of
the devices is 1 10 m. The threshold voltage of the D-mode
DH-HEMT with 5% and 10% indium composition is 3.6 and
3.8 V, respectively, which is higher than that of the conventional HEMT (4.7 V). This difference is caused by the different barrier thicknesses between the DH-HEMT samples and
the conventional HEMT sample. The maximum drain current of
the DH-HEMT is about 800 mA/mm, which is lower than the
conventional one (900 mA/mm) due to a smaller 2DEG density. It is found that the DH-HEMT shows a smaller OFF-state
leakage current than the conventional one. For the DH-HEMT
with a 10% indium composition, the leakage current is about
5 A/mm at VDS = 10 V and VGS < 4 V, significantly lower
than that in our conventional HEMT devices (20 A/mm
at VGS = 5.2 V and 45 A/mm at VGS = 8 V). For
the 5% indium DH-HEMT, the leakage current is about
10 A/mm, which is smaller than the conventional HEMT but
larger than the 10% indium DH-HEMT. The different leakage
currents in the two DH-HEMTs are due to the difference in
the barrier height at the backside of 2DEG channel, as shown
in Fig. 1(b). The reduced leakage current in the DH-HEMTs
strongly indicates that the potential barrier provided by the
inserted InGaN layer below the 2DEG channel can effectively
improve the buffer isolation and an indium composition of 10%
is more efficient than 5% indium. The peak transconductance
of the DH-HEMT is about 225 mS/mm (for 10% indium) and
215 mS/mm (for 5% indium), which is about 10% and
5% higher than that in our conventional HEMT devices
(205 mS/mm). The differences in Gm s of the conventional
HEMT and DH-HEMTs originate from the incorporation of
indium during the growth of the AlGaN barrier layer, which
was found to slow down the growth rate of AlGaN. A reduced
AlGaN barrier thickness results in a smaller gate-to-channel
distance, yielding higher peak transconductances.
The currentvoltage (IV ) characteristics of the gate-todrain Schottky diode were also investigated. The results are
plotted in Fig. 5(a). The DH-HEMT devices exhibited a lower
reverse gate leakage current, which is about 75% lower than
that of the conventional HEMT. The reduced gate leakage
current in the InGaN-notch structures is a result of the improved surface morphology and the dislocation reduction. As
shown in the AFM results in Fig. 5(b) and (c), the lineshape dislocations that are usually observed in the conventional
Fig. 5. (a) DC IGD VGD characteristics of the DH-HEMTs and the conventional HEMT. AFM pictures of: (b) conventional HEMTs and (c) DH-HEMTs
(10% In). Lower dislocation density was achieved on the DH-HEMTs.
[Fig. 5(b)] AlGaN/GaN structures are absent in the InGaNnotch [Fig. 5(c)] samples. As reported recently [20], indium
atoms can play the role of surfactant and reduce the dislocation
density effectively. Although the indium source is only turned
on during the growth of the InGaN-notch layer, it is likely
that a small fraction of the indium atoms play the role of
surfactant and accompany the moving surface all the way up to
the AlGaN layer in the subsequent growth of the GaN channel
and AlGaN barrier. The DH-HEMTs with 5% and 10% indium
composition have similar surface morphology, and both can
exhibit reduced gate leakage current. Since the DH-HEMT with
10% indium exhibits the lowest buffer leakage and the highest
transconductance, this sample is the focus of the study for highfrequency small- and large-signal characterizations and E-mode
HEMT characterization.
Fig. 6 shows the comparison of the IDS VDS and IDS VGS
curves of 1 10 m D- and E-mode devices fabricated on
the DH-HEMT structure with In0.1 Ga0.9 N-notch. After CF4
plasma treatment and postgate annealing [19], the threshold
voltage of the DH-HEMT device was shifted from 3.8 to
+0.08 V. As shown in Fig. 6(b), with a gate bias of +3 V,
the maximum drain current on this E-mode DH-HEMT device
is about 540 mA/mm, which is about 66% of the value of the
D-mode devices. The peak value of the transconductance of this
device, as shown in Fig. 6(b), is about 210 mS/mm, which is
comparable to its D-mode counterpart (225 mS/mm).
B. Small-Signal RF Characteristics of the E-Mode DH-HEMT
Bias-dependent small-signal S-parameters measurements
were conducted on 1 100 m D- and E-mode
AlGaN/GaN/In0.1 Ga0.9 N/GaN DH-HEMTs, using an HP
4142B modular dc source/monitor and an Agilent 8722ES
network analyzer with cascade microwave probes. At a fixed
Rds
Rg + Ri
1/2
Fig. 9. Bias-dependent output resistance (RDS ) curves extracted from onwafer S-parameter measurements (frequency = 2 GHz) for 1 100 m
D-mode InGaN-notch DH-HEMT (circle) and conventional HEMT (square)
devices.
Fig. 11. Power performances of 1 100 m (a) D-mode and (b) E-mode
InGaN-notch DH-HEMT devices measured at 2 GHz, with a drain supply
voltage of 35 V. For the D-mode one, VGS = 2.5 V, GLinear = 25.5 dB,
Pout,max = 3.45 W/mm, and maximum PAE = 44%. For the E-mode one,
VGS = +0.5 V, GLinear = 26 dB, Pout,max = 3.12 W/mm, and maximum
PAE = 49%.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a detailed investigation on the
Al0.3 Ga0.7 N/GaN/In0.1 Ga0.9 N/GaN DH-HEMTs is presented.
By inserting a thin In0.1 Ga0.9 N layer into the channel region of
our conventional Al0.3 Ga0.7 N/GaN HEMT structure, a sharp
potential barrier was formed under the 2DEG channel, which
can help in improving the carrier confinement and then improving the buffer isolation characteristics. One order of magnitude
lower buffer leakage current was achieved on the InGaNnotch DH-HEMTs with 10% indium composition compared
with our conventional Al0.3 Ga0.7 N/GaN HEMTs. The lower
buffer leakage current features a larger output resistance of the
Fig. 13. IM3 measurement results of 1 100 m (a) D-mode and (b) E-mode
InGaN-notch DH-HEMT devices with a fundamental frequency of 2 GHz and
an offset frequency of 1 MHz. An OIP3 of 29.2 and 34.7 dBm were obtained
on the D-mode and E-mode device, respectively.
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Jia Zhu, photograph and biography not available at the time of publication.
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