Terahertz radiation emission from an electrically excited AlGaN/GaN heterostructure with a surface metal grating was studied under conditions of two-dimensional (2D) electron heating by the lateral electric field. Intensive peaks related to nonequilibrium 2D plasmons were revealed in the terahertz emission spectra with up to 4 times selective amplification of the radiation emission in the vicinity of 2D plasmon resonance. This selective emission was shown to be frequency-controllable by the grating period. Exact spectral positions of the 2D plasmon resonances were preliminarily experimentally detected with the help of equilibrium transmission spectra measured at various temperatures. The resonance positions are in a satisfactory agreement with the results of theoretical simulation of the transmission spectra performed using a rigorous solution of Maxwell's equations. The effective temperature of hot 2D electrons was determined by means of I-V characteristics and their analysis using the power balance equation. It was shown that for a given electric field, the effective temperature of nonequilibrium 2D plasmons is close to the hot 2D electron temperature. The work may have applications in GaN-based electrically pumped emitters of terahertz radiation.

The effect of the Fe doping profile of the GaN buffer layer in the heterostructures for high-electron mobility transistors was studied experimentally and by computer simulation. The exponential Fe tail extending to the nominally undoped layers may greatly affect the properties of the structure. Reducing the distance between the channel and the Fe-doped buffer to less than 1 μm results in a decrease in the density and mobility of the two-dimensional electron gas. It also leads to the higher off-state avalanche breakdown voltage and reduced leakage current. A good agreement between simulation and experimental data is obtained when taking into account a Fe segregation effect, while an abrupt doping profile lead to significant discrepancies between them

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Calculational analysis of different scattering mechanisms of two-dimensional electron gas in AlGaN/(AlN)/GaN and InAlN/(AlN)/GaN high-electron mobility transistors was carried out. It was found that the mobility of AlGaN-based structures at room temperature is mainly limited by inherent scattering mechanisms (namely, optical and acoustic phonon scattering), while the mobility in our InAlN-based structures is limited by the interface roughness scattering. The low-temperature mobility is found to be limited by the interface roughness scattering for both AlGaN- and InAlN-based structures.

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