Improvement of drain breakdown voltage with a back-side gate on AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors

Ya Hsi Hwang, Chen Dong, Yue Ling Hsieh, Weidi Zhu, Shihyun Ahn, Fan Ren, Stephen J. Pearton, Ivan I. Kravchenko

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

The effect of a back gate on the dc performance of AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistor was investigated. The back gate was fabricated directly under the device active area by etching off the Si substrate, AlN nucleation layer, and graded AlGaN transition layer and depositing Ni/Au-based gate metal on the exposed GaN buffer layer. The reverse bias gate leakage current decreased from 3.9-×-10-5 to 1.2-×-10-5-mA/mm by applying -10-V at the back gate. Because of the suppression of gate leakage current by the back gate, the drain on/off ratio improved from 1.8-×-105 to 1.2-×-106 and the subthreshold swing from 204 to 137-mV/dec. Moreover, the drain breakdown voltage could be improved by 40% when the back gate was biased at -25-V.

Original languageEnglish
Article number042201
JournalJournal of Vacuum Science and Technology B: Nanotechnology and Microelectronics
Volume33
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 1 2015

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