This paper reports fluorine plasma treatment enhancement-mode HEMTs (high electronic mobility transistors) EHEMTs and conventional depletion-mode HEMTs DHEMTs fabricated on one wafer using separate litho-photography technology. It finds that fluorine plasma etches the AlGaN at a slow rate by capacitance-voltage measurement. Using capacitance-frequency measurement, it finds one type of trap in conventional DHEMTs with τ T = (0.5 − 6) ms and D T = (1 − 5)×10 13 cm −2 • eV −1 . Two types of trap are found in fluorine plasma treatment EHEMTs, fast with τ T(f) = (0.2 − 2) µs and slow with τ T(s) = (0.5 − 6) ms. The density of trap states evaluated on the EHEMTs isfor the fast and slow traps, respectively. The result shows that the fluorine plasma treatment reduces the slow trap density by about one order, but introduces a new type of fast trap. The slow trap is suggested to be a surface trap, related to the gate leakage current.

An enhancement-mode (E-mode) AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMTs) was fabricated with 15-nm AlGaN barrier layer. E-mode operation was achieved by using fluorine plasma treatment and post-gate rapid thermal annealing. The thin barrier depletion-HEMTs with a threshold voltage typically around -1.7 V, which is higher than that of the 22-nm barrier depletion-mode HEMTs (-3.5 V). Therefore, the thin barrier is emerging as an excellent candidate to realize the enhancement-mode operation. With 0.6-µm gate length, the devices treated by fluorine plasma for 150-W RF power at 150 s exhibited a threshold voltage of 1.3 V. The maximum drain current and maximum transconductance are 300 mA/mm, and 177 mS/mm, respectively. Compared with the 22-nm barrier E-mode devices, V T of the thin barrier HEMTs is much more stable under the gate step-stress.

AlGaN/GaN depletion-mode high-electron-mobility transistor (D-HEMT) and fluorine (F) plasma treated enhancement-mode high-electron-mobility transistor (E-HEMT) are exposed to 60 Co gamma radiation with a dose of 1.6 Mrad (Si). No degradation is observed in the performance of D-HEMT. However, the maximum transconductance of E-HEMT is increased after radiation. The 2DEG density and the mobility are calculated from the results of capacitance-voltage measurement. The electron mobility decreases after fluorine plasma treatment and recovers after radiation. Conductance measurements in a frequency range from 10 kHz to 1 MHz are used to characterize the trapping effects in the devices. A new type of trap is observed in the F plasma treated E-HEMT compared with the D-HEMT, but the density of the trap decreases by radiation. Fitting of Gp/ω data yields the trap densities D T = (1 − 3) × 10 12 cm −2 • eV −1 and D T = (0.2 − 0.8) × 10 12 cm −2 •eV −1 before and after radiation, respectively. The time constant is 0.5 ms-6 ms. With F plasma treatment, the trap is introduced by etch damage and degrades the electronic mobility. After 60 Co gamma radiation, the etch damage decreases and the electron mobility is improved. The gamma radiation can recover the etch damage caused by F plasma treatment.