Investigation of passivation effects in AlGaN/GaN metal—insulator—semiconductor high electron-mobility transistor by gate—drain conductance dispersion study

Abstract

This paper studies the drain current collapse of AlGaN/GaN metal-insulator-semiconductor high electron-mobility transistors (MIS-HEMTs) with NbAlO dielectric by applying dual-pulsed stress to the gate and drain of the device. For NbAlO MIS-HEMT, smaller current collapse is found, especially when the gate static voltage is −8 V. Through a thorough study of the gate-drain conductance dispersion, it is found that the growth of NbAlO can reduce the trap density of the AlGaN surface. Therefore, fewer traps can be filled by gate electrons, and hence the depletion effect in the channel is suppressed effectively. It is proved that the NbAlO gate dielectric can not only decrease gate leakage current but also passivate the AlGaN surface effectively, and weaken the current collapse effect accordingly.

The degradation and recovery properties of AlGaN/GaN high-electron mobility transistors under direct current reverse step voltage stress

“…Some researchers have looked into improving HEMT reliability under electrical stress by changing device structure and fabrication processes. [5][6][7] To further study the degradation of device parameters under electrical stress and the recovery when stress is removed, we analyze the gate current, drain current under DC reverse step voltage stress and large-signal parasitic source/drain resistance, and gate-source forward I-V characteristics before and after device under test (DUT) breakdown in experiments. The effect of electrons trapped by barrier traps and surface states in the degradation and recovery is investigated.…”