A Study of The Impact of Gate Metals On The Performance of AlGaN-AlN-GaN Heterostructure Field-Effect Transistors
A Study of The Impact of Gate Metals On The Performance of AlGaN-AlN-GaN Heterostructure Field-Effect Transistors
A Study of The Impact of Gate Metals On The Performance of AlGaN-AlN-GaN Heterostructure Field-Effect Transistors
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(Received 4 May 2015; accepted 4 September 2015; published online 15 September 2015)
The fabrication processes of heterostructure field-effect transistors (HFETs) often introduce
stresses into the device structures. These stresses can significantly affect the electrical characteristics of the device. We investigated the additional strain induced by the gate metals (in this study,
Au, Cu, Fe, Al, and Ni) in AlGaN/AlN/GaN HFETs using the measured capacitance-voltage and
current-voltage characteristics. We found that the intensity of the additional strain of the AlGaN
barrier layer is greatly affected by the types of gate metals. For those metals that mainly undergo a
physical interaction with the AlGaN barrier layer, there is a negative correlation between the intensity of the additional strain and the Youngs modulus of the gate metal. Therefore, the gate metal
with a larger Youngs modulus will be more favorable for weakening polarization Coulomb field
scattering and increasing both the carrier mobility and the sheet carrier density in AlGaN/AlN/GaN
C 2015 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4931122]
HFETs. V
0003-6951/2015/107(11)/113502/5/$30.00
107, 113502-1
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FIG. 1. The measured C-V curves (a) and the calculated 2DEG electron density n2D (b) under different gate biases for the AlGaN/AlN/GaN HFETs with
different types of the gate metals at room temperature.
UM (eV)
VT (V)
ub (eV)
4.28
5.10
4.65
5.15
4.50
4.60
2.85
3.10
3.20
3.20
6.18
6.24
7.26
7.35
7.60
1.02
1.21
1.38
1.20
1.22
composition, barrier thickness, doping, and strain of the barrier layer.20,21 In this study, the mechanisms that affect the
2DEG densities should be only related to the Schottky contact processing, since the AlGaN/AlN/GaN heterostructure
material, device isolation, Ohmic contact processing, and the
device structure are exactly the same. As the surface of the
AlGaN barrier layer is significantly rough after being treated
by the O2 plasma ashing and diluted HCl, which allows
metal atoms to enter the AlGaN lattice structure, sometimes
even in the interstitial position,22 we believe that both chemical reaction and physical interaction probably exist at the
gate metal/AlGaN interface in or after the Schottky contact
processing.
For the devices with Al/Au gate metal, the previous
research shows that the Al/AlGaN interface undergoes a GaAl exchange chemical reaction driven by the large heat of
formation of AlN as compared to that of GaN at room temperature.23 With the Schottky contact metals removed, the
scanning electron microscope with energy dispersive spectrometer (SEM-EDS) measurements were performed under
the gate at room temperature. The experimental results are
consistent with the conclusion in Ref. 23. The detailed experimental results and discussion are given in supplementary
material.24
As shown in Fig. 1 and Table I, the 2DEG sheet carrier
density for Al/Au gate metals is lower than that of other
devices at zero gate bias. We deduce that the possible reason
for the lower 2DEG sheet carrier density is the chemical
reaction at the Al/AlGaN interface leads to a thinner AlGaN
barrier layer and affects the parameters of the surface donor
states of the AlGaN barrier layer, such as the surface electronic state density and energy level. While the chemical
reaction product as an intermediate at the Al/AlGaN interface increases the distance between the gate metal and the
2DEG channel, which causes weaker control ability of the
Schottky contact to the 2DEG and results in a high-dose negative shift of the threshold voltage. The above explanations
for the Al/Au Schottky gate device are tentative, and the further study is needed to understand the related phenomena.
For the other four devices, the threshold voltages are
around 3 V as listed in Table I. Studies have shown that
these metals would undergo less chemical reactions with the
AlGaN barrier layer compared to Al described above.2126
Therefore, the physical interactions should be the main cause
of the additional strain, whose intensity, as a result, would be
mainly determined by the physical properties of the gate
metals.
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FIG. 3. The relationship between the electron mobility of the 2DEG and the
applied gate bias for the AlGaN/AlN/GaN HFETs with different types of the
gate metals at room temperature.
Au
Cu
Ni
Fe
7.25
0.184
14.2
78.5
0.181
7.72
0.234
16.5
129.8
0.127
8.05
0.270
13.4
199.5
0.067
8.38
0.305
11.8
211.4
0.056
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metals. According to the schematic diagram of the polarization charge distribution and the stress induced by the gate
metals in Fig. 4, compressive strain of the AlGaN barrier
layer can be caused by uniaxial and biaxial stress induced by
the gate metals. As the mass of the gate metals has little
effect on the device performance, biaxial stress would be the
main factor of the additional strain of the AlGaN barrier
layer, and it is closely related to the types of gate metals.
Based on the analysis above, the intensity of additional
strain is mainly related to the physical properties of the gate
metals. The compressive stress of the AlGaN barrier layer
induced by the gate metals is probably formed as follows:
the gate metal is deposited at a high temperature, and as it
cools, it will undergo residual tensile stress while the AlGaN
layer beneath would be under compression. The additional
strain caused by the gate metal is a combination of both the
coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) mismatch and the
Youngs modulus mismatch. Youngs modulus predicts how
much a material sample extends under tension or shortens
under compression,33 and it is a physical quantity associated
with the strain of the multilayer materials according to
earlier studies.3436 During the gate metal (Fe, Cu, Ni, and
Au) deposition, there are the physical interactions between
the gate metal and the AlGaN barrier layer. The gate metal
with a larger Youngs modulus is corresponding to a smaller
deformation, and exerts a small force to the AlGaN barrier
layer, which results in the additional strain of the AlGaN barrier layer being small too. Table II shows that the maximum
discrepancy among the CTE of the different Schottky metals
is 39.8%, which is much less than the maximum discrepancy
of 169.3% for the Youngs modulus of those Schottky metals, and the experimental results show a negative correlation
between the additional strain of the AlGaN barrier layer and
the Youngs modulus of the gate metal. We deduce that
Youngs modulus is the dominant factor that determines the
additional strain. The larger the Youngs modulus of the gate
metal is, the weaker the additional strain to the AlGaN barrier layer is. As a result, the gate metal with a larger Youngs
modulus will induce higher both the 2DEG electron density
and the electron mobility, which results in the larger saturated output channel current. It is confirmed from the measured output I-V characteristics of Fig. 2 that the carrier
mobility curves of Fig. 3 are also consistent with the additional strain induced by the gate metals.
In summary, we have investigated the additional strain
induced by the gate metals in the AlGaN/AlN/GaN HFETs
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