Fabrication and characterization of high-voltage AlGaN/GaN HEMTs on silicon substrates (Conference Presentation)

AlGaN/GaN High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMTs) are capable of achieving high breakdown voltage, low operating resistance and large switching speed due to the excellent performance shown by III-N structures. The paper presents selected details of technological experimental work on high voltage (HV) AlGaN/GaN-on-Si HEMTs fabricated with multifinger structures and gate widths of up to 40×1 mm. The electrical isolation of individual devices was elaborated using Al+ implantation. The ions were implanted up to a depth of 200 nm in order to produce an effective damage and isolation up to the non-conducting AlGaN buffer layer. The influence of the ion energy (in the range 208-385 kV) and the ion dose (in the range 8.5x1012-1.4x1013cm-2) on the effectiveness of the fabricated isolation was found. The properties of the fabricated ohmic contacts (using Ti/Al/Mo/Au and Ti/Al/TiN/Cu metallization schemes) with emphasis put on the technology of recess etching were studied. The impact of various pretreatment, applied before deposition of the gate metallization, on electrical parameters of multifinger devices was analysed. The tested pretreatment methods included oxide removal in HCl-based solution, and O2 or BCl3 plasma treatment, with the lowest gate leakage current obtained for the latter. The results of fabrication of the HV HEMTs with single field-plate structures with various dielectrics (Si3N4 or Al2O3) are discussed. The characterization results within the paper cover electrical (I-V characteristics), structural (TEM, XRD), topographical (AFM) and elemental (EDS mapping) analyses. This work was supported by The National Centre for Research and Development under Agreement nr TECHMATSTRATEG1/346922/4/NCBR/2017 for project Technologies of semiconductor materials for high power and high frequency electronics