Spectrum Analysis of 2-D Plasmon in Gan-Based High Electron Mobility Transistors
Spectrum Analysis of 2-D Plasmon in Gan-Based High Electron Mobility Transistors
Abstract—We have investigated terahertz (THz) resonant ab- In the region of off-resonance, the photoresponse is a smooth
sorption spectra in grating-gate GaN high electron mobility tran- function of gate voltage as well as frequency [9], [10], while
sistors. The results indicate that both the symmetrical plasmon resonant photoresponse can be obtained if certain conditions
mode and the asymmetrical plasmon mode play an important role
in the strong absorption of THz waves. The excitation process and are satisfied [11].
dynamic response of these plasmons are investigated in detail. Our However, short gated plasmons couple very poorly to THz
results also indicate that the asymmetrical plasmon is induced by radiation due to the acoustical nature and small net dipole mo-
the surface polarization field of the electrodes and the resonant ment of these plasmons [12]. The observed resonant structures
strength of this plasmon is reduced significantly by the decay of the in the photoresponse are mainly caused by the nonlinearity
polarization field. Variations in the resonant strength of the plas-
monic peaks are consistent with the surface resonant layer model of gated plasmons [13]. Although previous electrostatic the-
showing that the method we used can be utilized for the study ories can predict relatively accurate results for the frequencies
of coupling between THz radiation and plasmons in the channel. of THz resonance, the effective excitation of plasmonic res-
In order to achieve wider tunability, more advanced device struc- onance and the broadening of spectral peaks still need to be
tures can be explored such as a device that contains double channel explained [14], [15]. Popov et al. have shown that the broaden-
layers, in which complicated plasmons can be excited.
ing of a gated plasmon resonance linewidth is mainly caused by
Index Terms—High electron mobility transistors (HEMTs), the intermodal plasmon–plasmon scattering (the process dur-
plasmonics, spectrum, terahertz (THz) detectors. ing which the resonant gated plasmons excite the nonresonant
ungated plasmons) at the ends of the gated portion of the tran-
I. INTRODUCTION sistor channel [16]. Special antennas are needed to improve the
efficiency of coupling between the THz radiation and gated plas-
N THE last decade, voltage tunable solid-state detectors have
I gained wide recognition as potential devices for the realiza-
tion of integrated terahertz (THz) electronics in many techno-
mons. In previous work, metal grating-gate transistors for both
THz emission and detection have been proposed [8], [17], [18].
There are two purposes for using a grating-gate coupler: one is
logical applications such as imaging/sensing systems, commu- the spatial modulation of electron density, and the other is for
nication systems, etc. [1]–[3]. Since the first demonstration of the excitation of 2-D plasmons through a spatially modulated
2-D plasmon resonance in a submicron high electron mobil- THz near-field/polarization field. Most of the reported works
ity transistor (HEMT) with an operating frequency located in focus on GaAs HEMTs with submicrometer gate length due to
the THz range, various theoretical and experimental studies on the low electron density in the channel.
THz wave resonances have been performed [4]–[8]. In prin- Recently, large area slit grating-gate GaN HEMTs have at-
ciple, 2-D plasmons behave like shallow water under a gate, tracted much attention for the potential of wide tunability in
and the fundamental frequency of the plasmonic oscillations is the THz frequency domain due to high electron density induced
determined by the gate length and plasma wave velocity. Hy- by the polarization effect [18]–[20]. In this paper, THz reso-
drodynamic nonlinearity of plasmonic oscillations can cause a nant absorption in GaN HEMTs with metal grating-gate and
constant source-to-drain voltage, which is recognized as a pho- quantum-wire grating-gate structures are investigated in detail.
toresponse under the illumination of the HEMT by THz waves. The field distributions and dipole oscillations of plasmons in
the single electron layer are presented for better understanding
about the dynamic of plasmonic oscillation.
Manuscript received September 22, 2011; revised December 2, 2011,
December 30, 2011, and February 4, 2012; accepted February 9, 2012. Date of
publication February 17, 2012; date of current version February 1, 2013. This
work was supported in part by the State Key Program for the Basic Research of
China under Grant 2007CB613206 and Grant 2011CB922004, by the National
II. DEVICE DESCRIPTION AND CHARACTERISTIC PARAMETERS
Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61006090, Grant 10725418, Fig. 1 shows the typical structure of a grating-gate GaN
Grant 10734090, Grant 10990104, and Grant 60976092, and by the Fund of
Shanghai Science and Technology Foundation under Grant 09DJ1400203, Grant HEMT. The device epilayer structures are grown by low-
09dz2202200, Grant 10JC1416100, and Grant 10510704700, and the Knowl- pressure metal organic chemical vapor deposition on 4H-SiC
edge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences under Grant or sapphire substrates [21]. All the AlGaN and GaN layers are
Q-ZY-7.
The authors are with the National Laboratory for Infrared Physics, Shanghai assumed to be Ga face. The thickness of the Alx Ga1−x N buffer
Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200083, layer is usually in the range of 1–2 μm in order to ensure high
China (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]). crystal quality. However, the mole fraction x should not ex-
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. ceed 15%, because a larger mole fraction can lead to severe
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSTQE.2012.2188381 interface scattering and depletion of the 2-D electron gas
(2DEG) in the GaN channel layer. After the buffer layer, the
+∞
−i ω t
j (x, z, ω) = σm E m (z)eiq m x . (5)
GaN channel and the Aly Ga1−y N barrier are sequentially grown
m =−∞
with a thickness of approximately 30 nm. The mole fraction y
in Aly Ga1−y N barrier is approximately 30%. Transistor fabri- After linearizing the continuity and Euler’s equations for the
cation can be completed after the deposition of electrodes. The electron density n and velocity v, the formulation of conductiv-
measured room temperature Hall mobility and sheet electron ity can be expressed as follows [22], [23]:
density are approximately 1200 cm−2 /V·s and 1–3 × 1013 cm−2 , ns e2 iω
respectively [21]. A TM polarization THz wave is incident from σm = (6)
m (ω − qm v dr )(ω − qm v dr + iτ −1 )
∗
the backside of the device (our results indicate that stronger ab-
sorption can be obtained when the THz wave is incident from where ns is equilibrium electron density in the channel. The
backside, see Fig. 4 and discussions therein). As mentioned ear- conductivity in (6) is the most important parameter and describes
lier, due to the small net dipole moment of gated plasmons, a both plasma wave damping and plasma wave dynamics. The
grating coupler is required to improve the coupling efficiency. spatial dispersion of conductivity is related to the dc electron
The coupler, also serving as electrodes [18], can be formed by drift by the two parameters qm and v dr . In our case, the drift
electron-beam etching. The period of the grating gate is 0.6 μm. velocity is zero and the conductivity can be simplified by the
A 0.7 duty cycle is implemented to ensure uniformity of the Drude-optical conductivity [18], [24].
2-D channel. Thus, the interaction between gated and ungated To examine energy transformation in the resonant surface
plasmons can be neglected. layer (grating gated 2-D channel), the phenomenological model
is used as in [24] and [25]. The admittance of the resonant
III. ANALYSIS MODEL AND SIMULATIONS surface layer is given as follows:
∞
The plasma wave behavior in a HEMT can be described by 1
Yeff ∼ . (7)
the hydrodynamic equations as follows [4]:
m =0
ω 2 − ωpm
2 − 2iγ ω
e
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WANG et al.: SPECTRUM ANALYSIS OF 2-D PLASMON 8400507
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8400507 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 19, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013
Fig. 3. Snap-shots of plasmonic oscillation and electric field distributions along the channel under the irradiation of THz wave corresponding to the frequencies
of peaks A 1 , B 1 , and C 1 . The distributions of E z and E x components are shown in the first and second rows, respectively. A relative coordinate X/L along the
abscissa axis is used here and L is the structure period. The dipole distributions along the channel are also shown in the third row with respect to the electric field
distributions, and the arrows show the orientation of the dipole vibrations.
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WANG et al.: SPECTRUM ANALYSIS OF 2-D PLASMON 8400507
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8400507 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 19, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013
sheet density (2 × 1012 cm−2 ) are modulated by the gate volt- nanometer InGaAs transistors,” Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 89, p. 222109,
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT [19] A. EI Fatimy, N. Dyakonova, Y. Meciani, T. Ostuji, W. Knap, S. Vanden-
bronk, K. Madjour, D. Théron, C. Gaquieve, M. A. Poisson, S. Delage,
The authors would like to thank J. Torley from the University P. Prystawko, and C. Skierbiszewski, “AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility
of Colorado at Colorado Springs for critical reading of this transistors as a voltage-tunable room temperature terahertz sources,” J.
Appl. Phys., vol. 107, p. 024504, 2010.
manuscript. [20] A. V. Muravjov, D. B. Veksler, X. Hu, R. Gaska, N. Pala, H. Saxena,
R. E. Peale, M. S. Shur, “Resonant terahertz absorption by plasmons in
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WANG et al.: SPECTRUM ANALYSIS OF 2-D PLASMON 8400507
grating-gate transistor structure on membrane substrate,” Opt. Express, Wei-Da Hu received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in
vol. 18, pp. 16771–16776, 2010. material of science from the Wuhan University of
[26] Y. Zeng, Y. Fu, M. Bengesson, X. S. Chen, W. Lu, and H. Ågren, “Finite- Technology, Wuhan, China, in 2001 and 2004, re-
difference time-domain simulations of exciton-polariton resonances in spectively, and the Ph.D. degree (Hons.) in microelec-
quantum-dot arrays,” Opt. Express, vol. 16, pp. 4507–4519, 2008. tronics and solid-state electronics from the Shanghai
[27] L. Wang, X. S. Chen, W. D. Hu, J. Wang, J. Wang, X. D. Wang, and W. Lu, Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of
“The plasmonic resonant absorption in GaN double-channel high electron Sciences, Shanghai, China, in 2007.
mobility transistors,” Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 99, p. 063502, 2011. His experiences range from HgCdTe-based pho-
[28] T. V. Teperik, F. J. Garcı́a de Abajo, V. V. Popov, and M. S. Shur, “Strong todetector simulations to GaN-based devices (such
terahertz absorption bands in a scaled plasmonic crystal,” Appl. Phys. as HEMT and APD) design and simulations. He is
Lett., vol. 90, p. 251910, 2007. currently an Associate Professor on modeling, sim-
[29] G. C. Dyer, J. D. Crossno, G. R. Aizin, E. A. Shaner, M. C. Wanke, ulation, and design of photodetectors in the Shanghai Institute of Technical
J. L. Reno, and S. J. Allen, “A plasmonic terahertz detector with a Physics. He has authored or coauthored more than 50 technical journal papers
monolithic hot electron bolometer,” J. Phys.: Condens. Matter, vol. 21, and conference presentations. His current research interests include plasma wave
p. 195803, 2009. detection of terahertz radiation using HEMTs, GaN-based device simulations,
[30] G. C. Dyer, G. R. Aizin, J. L. Reno, E. A. Shaner, and S. J. Allen, “Novel and HgCdTe-based photodetector simulations.
tunable millimeter-wave grating-gated plasmonic detectors,” IEEE J. Sel.
Top. Quantum Electron., vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 85–91, Jan./Feb. 2011.
[31] X. G. Peralta, S. J. Allen, M. C. Wanke, N. E. Harff, J. A. Simmons,
M. P. Lilly, J. L. Reno, P. J. Burke, and J. P. Eisenstein, “Terahertz pho-
toconductivity and plasmon modes in double-quantum-well field-effect
transistors,” Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 81, pp. 1627–1629, 2002.
[32] R. M. Chu, Y. G. Zhou, J. Liu, D. L. Wang, K. J. Chen, and K. M. Lau,
“AlGaN-GaN double-channel HEMTs,” IEEE Trans. Electron. Devices, Wei Lu (M’10) received the B.S. degree in physics
vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 438–445, Apr. 2005. from Fudan University, Shanghai, China, in 1983,
and the Ph.D. degree from the Shanghai Institute of
Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Shanghai, China, in 1988.
He has been the Research Fellow in the Tech-
nical University of Braunschweig, Braunschweig,
Germany, 1989, and a Visiting Professor in the many
Lin Wang received the B.S. degree in applied physics countries. He is currently a Professor in Shanghai In-
(Hons.) from the Zhejiang University of Science and stitute of Technical Physics. He has authored or coau-
Technology, Hangzhou, China, in 2008. He is cur- thored more than 150 publications on optoelectronic
rently working toward the Ph.D. degree in micro- materials and devices. His current research interests include HgCdTe-based
electronics and solid-state electronics at the Shanghai photodetectors, semiconductor physics and solid spectroscopy, and physics of
Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of condensed matter.
Sciences, Shanghai, China. Dr. Lu is the Director of the National Laboratory for Infrared Physics and
His current research interests include plasma wave Shanghai Physical Society. He is the recipient of many national awards. He is
detection of terahertz radiation and GaN-based high also serving on the editorial board of the Journal of Applied Physics.
power device simulations.
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