Effect of surface passivation on the electrical performance of AlGaN/GaN high-electron-mobility transistors with slant field plates fabricated using deep-UV lithography

Lu Che Huang, Chia Hua Chang, Yueh Chin Lin, Heng-Tung Hsu*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

AlGaN/GaN high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) have been extensively applied for high power applications at high frequencies. To further improve the device performance, field plates and passivation layers are commonly integrated with the device technology. This paper is to investigate the effects of surface passivation thickness on the electrical performance of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs with slant field plates fabricated using deep-UV technology. As a benchmark, the device without nitride passivation exhibited a peak transconductance of 214 mS/mm and a breakdown voltage of 122 V with an output power of 5.0 W/mm at 8 GHz. For the passivated devices, it is observed that the existence of the silicon nitride passivation layer helps to improve the DC characteristics of the devices in terms of the lower drain current collapse, higher maximum DC transconductance, and higher maximum drain current. RF wise, the devices with passivation suffer from lower fT and fMAX due to the increase in the gate capacitances. However, an improvement of RF output power was observed for devices with passivation layer thickness up to 300 nm.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1600230
JournalPhysica Status Solidi (C) Current Topics in Solid State Physics
Volume14
Issue number1-2
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2017

Keywords

  • AlGaN/GaN
  • filed plate
  • high-electron mobility transistor
  • passivation

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