This work provides comparative studies of AlGaN/GaN MOS-HEMT with the devised stacked La 2 O 3 /Al 2 O 3 dielectric structure with respect to a conventional Schottky-gate HEMT and a reference La 2 O 3 -dielectric MOS-HEMT, which were all fabricated on the identical epitaxial layers. The La 2 O 3 /Al 2 O 3 stacked dielectrics are formed by using RF magnetron sputter/H 2 O 2 oxidization. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurement with different frequency, and low-frequency noise (LFN) analysis were used to study the interface and oxide quality. Comprehensive studies on electrical and thermal stability characteristics have been performed. Improved transconductance gain (g m ), current drive, breakdown, and thermal stability at 300-480 K are achieved in the present MOS-HEMT design.Gallium nitride (GaN) HEMTs have demonstrated promising potential in high-power and high-frequency applications. 1,2 In general, the GaN HEMTs use Schottky contact as the gate electrode. The gate insulating capability is dependent on the barrier height between the gate metal and the semiconductor barrier. The Schottky contact has the advantage of easy fabrication. However, the problem such as Fermi level pinning (FLP) reduces the Schottky barrier height which would seriously degrade the gate leakage. The MOS-gate structure has been proposed to enhance the gate insulating by reducing the gate leakage. 3 Furthermore, the dielectric material can be used as the passivation layer at the same time to resolve the RF drain current collapse 4 problems. High dielectric constant (k) materials such as Al 2 O 3, 5,6 HfO 2, 7 TiO 2, 8 and ZrO 2 9 are very promising for providing low equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) and good gate insulating. In addition, stacked gate dielectric structures such as LaAlO 15 were studied to further enhance the gate insulating capability. Our previous work has also demonstrated AlGaN/GaN MOS-HEMTs 13 with stacked HfO 2 /Al 2 O 3 gate dielectrics by using separate fabrication techniques. La 2 O 3 has competitive dielectric constant (20∼25), larger bandgap (∼6 eV), and better thermal stability than HfO 2 . 16,17 This work employs H 2 O 2 oxidation technique to grow Al 2 O 3 on the AlGaN barrier. Then, the high-k La 2 O 3 is sputtered on the Al 2 O 3 liner to form the stackeddielectric design for the present La 2 O 3 /Al 2 O 3 /AlGaN/ GaN MOS-HEMT. The oxide quality of La 2 O 3 /Al 2 O 3 stacks of the MOS-gate structure is studied. Improved electrical performances of the present La 2 O 3 /Al 2 O 3 /AlGaN/GaN MOS-HEMT are also investigated in comparison with a reference La 2 O 3 /AlGaN/GaN MOS-HEMT and a conventional Schottky-gate device, which were all fabricated on the identical epitaxial structure.
Material Growth and Device FabricationThe epitaxial structure of the studied AlGaN/GaN MOS-HEMTs, as shown in Fig. 1a, is grown by the metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) system. On the SiC substrate, a 30-nm thick low-temperature-grown GaN is the nucleation layer. The 2-μm thick GaN an...