Effect of substrate-induced strain in the transport properties of AlGaN/GaN

heterostructures
M. Azize and T. Palacios
Citation: Journal of Applied Physics 108, 023707 (2010); doi: 10.1063/1.3463150
View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3463150
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JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS 108, 023707 2010

Effect of substrate-induced strain in the transport properties of AlGaN/GaN

heterostructures
M. Azizea and T. Palacios
Microsystems Technology Laboratories, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
02139, USA

Received 19 March 2010; accepted 11 June 2010; published online 27 July 2010
This paper studies the effect of substrate-induced strain in the transport properties of AlGaN/GaN
heterostructures grown on Si substrates by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition. Partial thinning
of the original Si substrate by chemical dry etching has been used to induce controllable amounts of
biaxial strain in the sample. After each etching step, Raman and Hall effectVan Der Pauw
measurements were performed as a function of remaining Si substrate thickness to study the residual
biaxial strain and transport properties of the two-dimensional electron gas 2DEG. A 25% increase
in the 2DEG density was obtained after removal of 30% of the total Si thickness. In addition, a
20% higher electron mobility has been observed under biaxial strain increase. This new technology
has been applied to standard AlGaN/GaN transistors grown on Si substrates to increase their
maximum current density by 20%. 2010 American Institute of Physics.
doi:10.1063/1.3463150
I. INTRODUCTION

The high current density of AlGaN/GaN high electron

mobility transistors HEMTs makes these devices excellent
candidates for high power and high frequency applications.1
This very high current is the result of a high mobility and the
large difference in the polarization fields in the AlGaN and
GaN layers, which leads to a net positive polarization P in
the AlGaN barrier and induces a two-dimensional electron
gas 2DEG at the AlGaN/GaN interface.2
The net charge at the AlGaN/GaN heterointerface is a
strong function of the residual biaxial strain at room temperature RT in the AlGaN layer xx, which can be calculated as3
xxRT = ELGT + THRT ,

where ELGT is the elastic strain due to the AlGaNGaN

lattice mismatch at the growth temperature GT, and thRT
is the thermal strain due to the thermal expansion mismatch
between the epitaxial layers and the substrate during the cool
down step of the growth. By changing the residual strain it is
possible to change the electrical properties of the 2DEG.4
For example, increasing the tensile strain of AlGaN/GaN
hetrostructure by either depositing a SixNy cap layer or an
increase in the Al-content of the barrier results in higher ns
due to the increase in elastic strain and piezoelectric polarization in the AlGaN barrier.4,5
This paper studies the effect of the substrate in the residual strain of AlGaN/GaN layers and in the transport properties of the 2DEG. This study has traditionally been challenging as different substrates require completely different
growth conditions and it is therefore difficult to decouple the
effects of the substrate and the growth. To overcome this
challenge, in this work we have changed the residual strain
a

Electronic mail: mazize@mit.edu.

0021-8979/2010/1082/023707/4/$30.00

by partially etching the substrate of AlGaN/GaN HEMT

structures grown on a Si wafer. By controlling the amount of
remaining Si substrate, we can change the amount of biaxial
stress in the epilayer and study its effect in the transport
properties of the 2DEG.
II. EXPERIMENTAL DETAILS

We investigated Al0.26Ga0.74N / GaN heterostructures

grown on Si111 wafers by metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy by Nitronex Corporation.6 The thickness of the Si substrate is 500 m. The HEMT structure consists of a 2 nm
GaN cap layer, a 26 nm Al0.26Ga0.74N barrier, a 1 nm AlN
spacer, and a 0.8 m GaN channel, and a 1 m thick
AlxGa1xN / AlN stress mitigating buffer layer. The growth
conditions of this strain engineered AlGaN/AlN buffer are
similar to those described in Ref. 7 and induce compressive
strain into the 0.8 m GaN growth typically, 0.004
ELGT 0.002.8
After fabricating standard AlGaN/GaN HEMTs as described in Ref. 9, backside etching of the Si111 substrate
was performed in a deep reactive ion etching system using
SF6 chemistry. Six different samples were fabricated with Si
thicknesses varying from 500 m down to 150 m.
Raman spectroscopy and HallVan Der Pauw measurements
were performed in these samples as function of remaining Si
thickness.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

AlGaN/GaN HEMTs on Si substrates with varying Si

thickness were characterized by micro-Raman at RT using a
532 nm green laser in the zxxz scattering geometry. Raman
spectroscopy offers a noninvasive and simple way to probe
strain and stress in semiconductor materials with high spatial
resolution.10 Figure 1 shows the Raman spectra recorded before and after the Si substrate etching. The initial and final

108, 023707-1

2010 American Institute of Physics

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J. Appl. Phys. 108, 023707 2010

M. Azize and T. Palacios

FIG. 1. Room temperature Raman spectra of an AlGaN/GaN sample before

and after partially etching the Si substrate.

thicknesses of the Si wafer are tSi = 500 m and tSi

= 350 m, respectively. The spectra shows five first-order
phonon peaks, some related to the III-nitride layers and others to the Si substrate, as labeled in Fig. 1. In this paper, only
the E2high phonon mode related to the GaN buffer will
be considered since, due to its nonpolar origin, it is widely
used to quantify the stress in nitrides semiconductors.11 As
shown in the Fig. 1, the frequency of this phonon is red
shifted after etching, indicating an increase in the tensile
strain compared to strain-free samples.12 The inset of Fig. 1
shows the largest red frequency shift max 0.9 cm1 observed in this study, obtained when 30% of the original Si
thickness is etched i.e., tSi = 350 m. For thinner Si substrates i.e., more than 30% of the original substrate was
etched away, the E2high peak blueshifts not shown in the
Fig. 1, indicating a counter-balancing of the induced tensile
strain.
The amount of relative biaxial strain in the nitride layers
can be calculated from
xx = 0.000 62 0.000 86 E2 ,

where E2 is the shift in the frequency of the E2high phonon mode relative to the relaxed material.12 Figure 2 shows
the biaxial strain in the GaN buffer as a function of the

FIG. 2. In-plane biaxial strain in AlGaN/GaN heterostructures as a function

of remaining Si thickness. The in-plane strain was deduced from Raman
measurements at room temperature.

FIG. 3. Room temperature free carrier density vs in-plane strain in AlGaN/

GaN heterostructures as a function of remaining Si thickness substrate. The
solid straight line represents the expected variation in ns relative to in-plane
biaxial strain xx as calculated by Eq. 3.

remaining Si thickness. When the Si thickness is reduced

from 500 to 350 m, the tensile stress in the GaN buffer
increases. For a Si substrate thickness below 350 m, a
relaxation of the induced tensile strain occurs. As shown in
the inset of Fig. 2, scanning electron micrograph images of
the samples with Si thickness below 350 m revealed
cracks in AlGaN/GaN surface, which leads to relaxation of
the tensile strain when xx 0.16%.
Changes in tensile biaxial strain are linearly related to
the sheet carrier concentration in the 2DEG ns by the following relationship:13
dns/dxx 2.5 0.5 1015 e/cm2 .

Figure 3 shows the 2DEG carrier density measured by

RT HallVan Der Pauw in our devices solid line, and the
2DEG density predicted by Eq. 3 dashed line. As expected, ns increases quasilinearly with the additional tensile
strain induced by the substrate thickness reduction. ns is enhanced by 25% for the AlGaN/GaN sample with a Si substrate thickness of 350 m. These results agree well with
the ones reported in Ref. 14, where the tensile stress of an
AlGaN/GaN HEMT was changed externally through a bending apparatus.
Figure 4a shows the electron mobility e of the
2DEG as a function of the applied biaxial strain and the
corresponding charge density induced in the channel by the
increase in the tensile strain. The mobility plot exhibits a
bell-shape behavior: e starts at 1570 cm2 / V s for the lowest in-plane strain xx 0.08 0.01% as-grown sample and
rises to a peak mobility e 1643 cm2 / V s when xx
reaches 0.12 0.01%, before falling down to e
1610 cm2 / V s for the highest xx 0.16 0.01%. In all
the cases, the electron mobility is increased and remains
higher than the original e, when additive biaxial strain is
induced by thinning down the Si substrate.
The observed bell-shape behavior of the electron mobility can be explained by considering that the additive biaxial
strain generated when the Si substrate is thinned down, induces an increase in the electron mobility due to, probably, a
reduction in the electron effective mass. At the same time,

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023707-3

M. Azize and T. Palacios

J. Appl. Phys. 108, 023707 2010

FIG. 5. Color online dc current-voltage characteristics of a standard

AlGaN/GaN HEMT tSi = 500 m and an AlGaN/GaN HEMT after partial
removal of the Si substrate tSi = 450 m.

substrate, the Hall mobility increases and remains always

higher than the expected mobility. The applied biaxial strain
is therefore affecting the mobility in the samples beyond
what is expected for standard phonon scatterings. By comparing the experimental mobility measurements with the theoretical predictions assuming standard phonon scatterings
cf. the inset of Fig. 4b, the contribution of strain to mobility is linear and estimated in 20% higher mobility for
xx 0.16%.
The proposed method to introduce strain and increase
the charge density in AlGaN/GaN structures can be applied
to a fully processed AlGaN/GaN HEMT wafer to increase
the current density and reduce the access resistances in the
devices. Figure 5 shows a comparison of the current-voltage
characteristics of a standard HEMT, and the same device
after etching 10% of its Si substrate thickness. The maximum
current after Si etching is 27% higher than in the standard
device. As the deposition and anneal of the ohmic contacts in
a transistor also induce tensile strain cf. Ref. 16, we only
need to etch 10% of the Si thickness to induce maximum
strain and 2DEG charge. The pinch-off voltage Vp after the
etching is higher than in the reference device, which is conFIG. 4. Color online a Room temperature mobility vs in-plane strain in
AlGaN/GaN heterostructures. The solid line is a guide for the eye. b Hall
and expected mobility as a function of carrier density. c Shows the dependence of Hall mobility with in-plane biaxial strain for a fixed charge density.

the higher biaxial strain also increases the charge density,

which tends to decrease the mobility due to higher optical
phonon scattering.15
To decouple the effect of biaxial strain in the mobility
from the effect of the higher optical phonon scattering, Fig.
4b compares the experimental mobility Hall measured in
our samples to the theoretically expected mobility when the
effect of optical and acoustic phonon scatterings at room
temperature is considered.15 Taking into account the error
bars, the Hall mobility of the reference i.e., unetched
sample is in good agreement with the expected mobility.
When additional biaxial strain is introduced by thinning the

FIG. 6. Gate leakage current of a standard AlGaN/GaN HEMT tSi

= 500 m and an AlGaN/GaN HEMT after partial removal of the Si substrate tSi = 450 m.

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023707-4

J. Appl. Phys. 108, 023707 2010

M. Azize and T. Palacios

nitride-based devices. As an example, the proposed

substrate-etching technology has been used to increase the
current density of AlGaN/GaN transistors grown on silicon
by 27%.
ACKNOWLEDMENTS

This work has been partially funded by the MSD

MARCO program and the ONR Young Investigator project,
monitored by Dr. Paul Maki. Devices were fabricated at the
MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratory and Raman characterization was performed at the Harvard CNS facilities.
FIG. 7. I-V characteristics of a Schottky diode on an AlGaN/GaN heterostructure, before and after the partial removal of the Si substrate.

sistent with the increase in 2DEG density. Figure 6 shows the

gate leakage current versus drain voltage. The gate leakage
current after etching is low 5 7 A but slightly higher
than the unetched sample. This increase is due to a decrease
in the Schottky barrier height SBH of the gate electrode as
the biaxial strain is increased. The SBH was extracted from
the I-V characteristics of Schottky diodes before and after
the substrate thinning cf. Fig. 7. The SBH in the unetched
samples was 1.0 eV, while after the Si etching it decreased to
0.87 eV.
IV. CONCLUSION

In summary, additive tensile biaxial strain has been introduced into an AlGaN/GaN heterostructure grown on a Si
wafer by reducing the thickness of the Si substrate after the
growth of the nitride epilayer. As a result, the electron sheet
density increases by 25% and reaches ns 1 1013 cm2,
while the mobility increases by 20% for that charge density.
For tensile biaxial strain in excess of xx 0.16%, strain relaxation occurs and limits the increase in the charge density.
The changes in both charge density and mobility introduced
by biaxial strain offer a new degree of freedom to improve

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