RARE METALS

Rare Met.
DOI 10.1007/s12598-015-0451-3

www.editorialmanager.com/rmet

Dielectric thin films for GaN-based high-electron-mobility

transistors
Yan-Rong Li*, Xing-Zhao Liu, Jun Zhu,
Ji-Hua Zhang, Lin-Xuan Qian, Wan-Li Zhang

Received: 24 December 2014 / Revised: 13 January 2015 / Accepted: 13 January 2015

The Nonferrous Metals Society of China and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015

Abstract The effects of dielectric thin films on the performance of GaN-based high-electron-mobility transistors
(HEMTs) were reviewed in this work. Firstly, the nonpolar
dielectric thin films which act as both the surface passivation layers and the gate insulators of the high-frequency
GaN-based high-electron-mobility transistors were presented. Furthermore, the influences of dielectric thin films
on the electrical properties of two-dimensional electron gas
(2DEG) in the AlGaN/GaN hetero-structures were analyzed. It was found that the additional in-plane biaxial
tensile stress was another important factor besides the
change in surface potential profile for the device performance improvement of the AlGaN/GaN HEMTs with
dielectric thin films as both passivation layers and gate
dielectrics. Then, two kinds of polar gate dielectric thin
films, the ferroelectric LiNbO3 and the fluorinated Al2O3,
were compared for the enhancement-mode GaN-based
HEMTs, and an innovative process was proposed. At last,
high-permittivity dielectric thin films were adopted as
passivation layers to modulate the electric field and
accordingly increase the breakdown voltage of GaN-based
HEMTs. Moreover, the polyimide embedded with Cr particles effectively increased the breakdown voltage of GaNbased HEMTs. Finally, the effects of high-permittivity
dielectric thin films on the potential distribution in the drift

Y.-R. Li*, X.-Z. Liu, J. Zhu, J.-H. Zhang, L.-X. Qian,

W.-L. Zhang
State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin Films and Integrated
Devices, School of Microelectronics and Solid-State Electronics,
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China,
Chengdu 610054, China
e-mail: yrli@uestc.edu.cn

region were simulated, which showed an expanded electric

field peak at the drain-side edge of gate electrode.
Keywords GaN-based HEMTs; Surface passivation;
Gate dielectrics; Enhancement-mode HEMTs;
High-permittivity field plate

1 Introduction
Nowadays, the mass production of silicon crystals with
high purity and excellent crystalline can be easily realized
owing to the development of processing technology.
Moreover, silicon dioxide, as the native oxide of silicon,
can function as a high-quality dielectric thin film for the
present silicon complementary metaloxidesemiconductor (CMOS) field-effect transistors (FETs) and even the
future devices after the continued scaling in critical
dimension. Meanwhile, silicon-based devices dominate the
present semiconductor technology in various related
applications. However, silicon still has many drawbacks
due to its own physical properties. As a result, researchers
have been exploring the alternative semiconductor materials with supreme physical and electrical properties.
Within them, compound semiconductor GaAs, as one of
the second-generation semiconductors, is regarded as a
very promising candidate for photonics and high-frequency
electronic devices. Since early 1960s, intensive efforts
have been made to seek electrically and thermodynamically stable insulators for GaAs metaloxidesemiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs). For example,
the findings about the mixed oxide Ga2O3(Gd2O3) deposited by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) on GaAs surface
made a great progress in such a research field, which solves
the problems bothering researchers in the past 35 years [17].

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Consequently, IIIV MOSFETs explored a brand new field

for the integrated circuit (IC) industry, providing a timely
innovation to replace Si CMOS at 16 nm node.
In addition, GaN-based hetero-structure, such as AlGaN/
GaN, can realize an ultra-high-power density operation with
a low power loss due to its high carrier mobility in the twodimensional electron gas (2DEG) and large breakdown
voltage with a strong critical electric field. As a result, GaNbased hetero-structure FETs, as represented by the GaNbased high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs), were
considered as almost the most promising candidates for the
high-frequency and high-power microwave applications. In
the last decade, GaN-based HEMTs were highly developed
and successfully fabricated into some prototypes of monolithic microwave IC. Moreover, various dielectric thin films
were investigated in GaN-based HEMTs, and it was proved
that dielectrics played a very important role in their device
performance [816]. In this work, the effects of dielectric
thin films on the electrical properties of AlGaN/GaN heterostructures were systematically analyzed in order to better
control the device performance of GaN-based HEMTs.

2 Nonpolar dielectric thin films for high-frequency

GaN-based HEMTs
Both gate insulation and surface passivation are widely
adopted in GaN-based HEMTs. Moreover, many kinds of
nonpolar dielectric thin films, such as SiO2 [8], Si3N4 [14],
AlN [12], Al2O3 [13], Sc2O3 [9] and HfO2 [11], were
investigated for the applications of surface passivation and/
or gate insulation. Recently, GaN-based metalinsulator
semiconductor (MIS)-HEMTs have attracted considerable
attention since they can exhibit excellent direct-current
(DC) characteristics, especially for reducing the gate
leakage current which often appears in some conventional
metalsemiconductor (MES)-HEMTs [1720]. In addition,
radio frequency (RF) characteristics must be examined as
well to demonstrate the feasibility of MIS-HEMTs, and
excellent RF performance and power stability were reported in GaN-based MIS-HEMTs [8, 21, 22]. Moreover, the
Al2O3/Si3N4 bilayer gate insulator was proposed to
simultaneously utilize (1) the high-quality interface
between Si3N4 and AlGaN, and (2) the high resistivity and
large dielectric constant of Al2O3 [2327]. In these papers,
the simulation results showed that the electron tunneling
through the Schottky barrier, due to a high density of
donor-like defects on the surface of AlGaN barrier layers,
was the dominant mechanism of gate leakage current in the
conventional MES-HEMTs, and an Al2O3/Si3N4 bilayer
gate insulator can substantially reduce the donor-like surface defect density and then suppress the gate leakage
current in GaN-based MIS-HEMTs.

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Moreover, the potential application of GaN-based

HEMTs is also limited by the charge trapping effect [18,
20, 2830], particularly in the access region between gate
and drain. The trapped surface charges degrade device
performance and reliability. For example, the drain current
under a large sourcedrain voltage decreases, which is
called current collapse effect and believed to be due to the
traps both on the exposed surface and in the underlying
GaN buffer. Therefore, in addition to gate insulator,
dielectric thin films are often used for surface passivation
to suppress the surface charge trapping effect, which is
specific to GaN-based HEMTs. By means of adopting an
additional dielectric thin film as the passivation layer on
the top surface of GaN-based HEMTs, the current collapse
effect can be effectively suppressed due to the reduction in
surface electron traps.
It is one of the most fundamental studies for GaN-based
HEMTs to investigate the effects of dielectric passivation
on the electrical properties of 2DEG in the AlGaN/GaN
hetero-structures. For instance, the influence of depositing
dielectric thin films on the electrical properties of 2DEG in
GaN-based hetero-structures was investigated for the Siand Al-based insulators (Si3N4, SiO2, AlxNy and Al2O3),
which are widely adopted for surface passivation as well as
gate insulation. A significant increase in 2DEG concentration (Ns) was observed for all the insulators. Moreover,
Al2O3 exhibited a lower sheet resistance compared with
others. In addition, a band engineering was proposed to
study the physical mechanism of dielectric deposition
effects [31].
In our experiment, Al2O3 thin film was deposited on the
surface of AlGaN/GaN hetero-structure through MBE. The
Hall effect measurement was conducted at room temperature, and the result is shown in Table 1 [31]. Although the
sheet carrier concentration (Ns) and mobility (ls) of AlGaN/GaN hetero-structure vary from sample to sample,
both a Ns increase of about 30 % and a ls increase of about
20 % were observed in all the samples with the deposition
of Al2O3 thin film.
The AlGaN/GaN MIS-HEMTs with Al2O3 thin film for
both surface passivation and gate insulation are fabricated

Table 1 Effects of Al2O3 dielectric thin film on sheet carrier concentration and mobility of AlGaN/GaN hetero-structure
Parameters

400 C
12

500 C

600 C

-2

Sheet carrier concentration/10 cm

MES-HEMT

6.94

6.83

6.42

MIS-HEMT

8.73

8.78

8.32

Sheet carrier mobility/(cm2V-1s-1)

MES-HEMT

947

950

1,030

MIS-HEMT

1,150

1,090

1,260

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GaN-based high-electron-mobility transistors

as shown in the inset in Fig. 1 [31]. In addition, the AlGaN/

GaN MES-HEMTs without dielectric thin film were fabricated as well on the same wafer for the comparison
purpose. As shown in Fig. 1, the measured results of output
characteristics of MIS-HEMTs and MES-HEMTs exhibit
the maximum saturated drain currents (IDSSmax) of 790 and
590 mAmm-1 at a gate bias of 2 V, and the saturated
drain currents (IDSS) of 700 and 360 mAmm-1 at a gate
bias of 0 V, respectively [31]. Accordingly, MIS-HEMTs
yielded a 34 % increase in IDSSmax and a 94 % increase in
IDSS compared with MES-HEMTs. The increase in IDSSmax
revealed a larger output power density of MIS-HEMTs
than that of MES-HEMTs.
Besides, MIS-HEMTs possessed a peak extrinsic transconductance of 170 mSmm-1 at drainsource voltage
VDS = 10 V, higher than that of MES-HEMTs (120
mSmm-1) as shown in Fig. 2 [31]. The extrinsic transconductance is described by the equation: Gm;ext
Gm;int =1 Gm;int RS , where Rs is the series resistance, and
Gm,int is the intrinsic trans-conductance. Gm,int can be
described by Gm;int ld CGS VGS  Vth =LGS , where CGS is
the gate capacities, LGS is the gate length, Vth is the
threshold voltage, ld is the carrier mobility in the channel
and VGS is the gate voltage. Because of a larger gatechannel distance and a smaller gate capacitance, one would
expect a lower trans-conductance for MIS-HEMTs compared with that for MES-HEMTs. So, the enhanced transconductance of the MIS-HEMTs could be explained by the
increased sheet carrier mobility in the AlGaN/GaN heterostructure after the deposition of Al2O3 thin film as revealed
by the result of Hall effect measurement. Moreover, high
resolution X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns were also utilized to study the effects of depositing Al2O3 thin film on
the crystal structure of AlGaN/GaN hetero-structure. As
shown in Fig. 3, the diffraction peak from the (0001) plane

of the AlGaN barrier layer changed from 34.97 to 35.04

after the deposition of Al2O3 thin film [31]. Accordingly, a
smaller c-axis lattice constant of AlGaN barrier layers was
observed, which implies an expanded a-axis and/or b-axis
lattice constant. In other words, an additional in-plane
biaxial tensile stress was introduced into the AlGaN/GaN
barrier layers after the deposition of Al2O3 thin film.
The energy band gap, band offset, effective electron
mass and polarization were studied after taking into
account of the additional in-plane biaxial tensile stress.
Then, both concentration and mobility of sheet carrier were
calculated by a self-consistent method based on the charge
control model. As listed in Table 2 [32], the values of the
stress in AlGaN barrier layer before and after the deposition of Al2O3 thin film were 5.0 and 6.5 GPa, respectively
[31]. On the one hand, the additional in-plane biaxial tensile stress enhanced the band offset and polarization.
Accordingly, the calculated sheet carrier concentration

Fig. 1 Transfer characteristics of AlGaN/GaN MES-HEMTs and

AlGaN/GaN MIS-HEMTs. Inset being cross-sectional illustration of
AlGaN/GaN MIS-HEMTs with Al2O3 thin films for both surface
passivation and gate dielectrics. S source, G gate, D drain

Fig. 3 High resolution XRD patterns of AlGaN/GaN hetero-structure

with and without Al2O3 thin film coatings

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Fig. 2 Trans-conductance characteristics of AlGaN/GaN MESHEMTs and AlGaN/GaN MIS-HEMTs with Al2O3 thin films for
both surface passivation and gate dielectrics

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Table 2 Calculated lattice parameters, band gap (Eg), conduction
hxpop)
band offset (DEc), polarization (P) and optical phonon energy (
under different tensile stresses
Parameters

GaN

Al0.25Ga0.75N
Relaxed

5.0 GPa

6.5 GPa
0.3219

a/nm

0.3189

0.3168

0.3180

c/nm

0.5185

0.5154

0.5127

0.5117

Eg/eV

3.420

3.930

4.048

4.096

DEc/eV

0.35

0.44

0.47

mn (m0)

0.230

0.256

0.279

0.282

hxpop/meV

92.5

94.5

96.3

96.7

P/(lCcm-2)

2.90

4.40

5.17

6.34

N2DEG/1013 cm-2

0.7025

1.2730

1.9070

could be improved by about 50 %, which well explained its

experimental increase of 32 %. On the other hand, the
additional in-plane biaxial tensile stress deepened the
potential well at the AlGaN/GaN interface, resulting in a
decrease in the inter-sub-band scattering and thus an
improvement of electron mobility.
Furthermore, the influence of the interface between
dielectric thin film and the AlGaN barrier layer on the device
performance of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs was in-depth studied
[3234]. It was reported that the amount of interface traps
was effectively reduced accompanied by the decrease in the
lattice mismatch between dielectric thin film and AlGaN,
revealing the enhanced passivation effect of dielectric thin
film on the interface traps. For example, an excellent surface
passivation on HEMTs was achieved after employing a
lattice-matched crystalline MgCaO thin film as the passivation layer [33]. Recently, the high-crystallinity AlN thin
film grown by atomic layer deposition has been demonstrated to effectively passivate the surface of AlGaN/GaN
HEMTs [34]. It is believed that AlN thin film can provide
high dielectric constant, wide band gap, high thermal conductivity and small lattice mismatch to GaN. In that work,
the GaN-based HEMTs adopted an ultrathin (4 nm) highcrystallinity AlN thin film as the passivation layer,
improving the properties of 2DEG sheet carrier density, gate
leakage current, off-state drain leakage current, subthreshold slope and breakdown voltage, and also suppressing the degradation of dynamic on resistance during the
pulsed off-state voltage switching stress.

3 Polar dielectric thin films for enhancement-mode

GaN-based HEMTs
Nowadays, semiconductors, including Si, GaAs and GaN,
dominate the electronic devices, such as transistor, diode
and other light emitters. However, the responsivity to

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perturbation is quite poor if semiconductor is adopted in

sensor. Polar dielectrics, such as BaTiO3 (BTO), Pb(Zr,Ti)O3
(PZT) and LiNbO3 (LN), possess excellent piezoelectric,
pyroelectric, ferroelectric and electro-optic properties, which
make them favorable for the application in sensor. A small
perturbation, such as stress and temperature, in polar
dielectrics can induce the polarization change which can be
easily detected by some semiconductor-based devices.
So far, there are many publications in which polar
dielectrics are adopted in semiconductor device. Within the
related devices, ferroelectric random-access memory (FeRAM) is the most important one [35, 36]. It was reported
that ferroelectric capacitors (FE) were integrated with silicon devices by 1T-1C configuration, where the polarization state was measured through a transistor. The heterostructure which consists of polar dielectric and semiconductor can possess the properties of both materials at the
same time, which provides some possible applications in
sensor. For instance, the device called FET-sensor, in
which FET adopted polar dielectric as gate oxide, was
theoretically studied [37]. The calculation result shows that
such a functional device can have the properties of both
sensor and transistor. Accordingly, the ferroelectric polarization can be directly coupled to the transistor channel
based on the polar dielectric/semiconductor hetero-structure. Moreover, FET-sensor itself is a power amplifier, and
thus it is easy to integrate it into some electronic circuits or
microprocessors. Until now, some significant progresses
have been made although the complicated interface state
between polar dielectric and semiconductor causes some
difficulties [3841].
The effect of polar dielectrics on the characteristics of
2DEG in the AlGaN/GaN interface was theoretically
investigated based on the first-principle calculation and
charge control model [42]. The dependence of 2DEG
density on polarizability and the polar dielectric thickness
is shown in Fig. 4 [42]. It is clear that the sheet carrier
concentration in the AlGaN/GaN interface increases under
a positive polarization of polar dielectric. On the contrary,
a negative polarization of polar dielectric can result in the
decrease in sheet carrier concentration in the AlGaN/GaN
interface, which might be beneficial to realize the
enhancement-mode AlGaN/GaN HEMTs. However, the
result exceeds our expectation as exhibited by the limited
modulation of sheet carrier concentration, which could be
due to the large dielectric constant of the polar dielectric
adopted in this study. Accordingly, polar dielectric LN was
selected to experimentally modulate the 2DEG characteristics in the AlGaN/GaN interface due to its low dielectric
constant and large polarizability.
c-axis epitaxial LN thin film with c? ferroelectric
spontaneous polarization (pointing from substrate to the
surface of LN thin film) was deposited on AlGaN/GaN by
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GaN-based high-electron-mobility transistors

Fig. 4 Calculated modulation effect of polar dielectrics on sheet

carrier density in AlGaN/GaN interface

pulsed laser deposition, which causes a negative polarization [40, 41]. Based on the calculation result as shown
in Fig. 4, the sheet carrier concentration can be depleted
under a negative polarization. Therefore, it is expected
that the enhancement-mode AlGaN/GaN HEMTs can be
realized. As exhibited in the inset in Fig. 5, the AlGaN/
GaN MIS-HEMTs with the ferroelectric LN as gate
dielectrics were fabricated [40, 41]. As mentioned above,
the interface characteristics between dielectrics and the
AlGaN barrier layer is one of the most key factors
affecting the device performance of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs.
Therefore, a 5-nm-ZnO-buffer layer was introduced to
improve the epitaxial quality of LN gate dielectric [41]. In
addition, the AlGaN/GaN MES-HEMTs without LN gate
dielectric were also fabricated for the comparison purpose
[41]. The transfer characteristics of the AlGaN/GaN
MES-HEMTs with and without ZnO buffer layer are
shown in Fig. 5a [41], revealing the threshold voltage
(Vth) values of both samples are almost at the same level
(-2.2 V). Their negative Vth values prove that the AlGaN/GaN MES-HEMTs operate in the depletion mode. In
Fig. 5b, the transfer characteristics of the AlGaN/GaN
MIS-HEMTs with LN gate dielectrics are exhibited [41].
On the one hand, the electrical properties of the AlGaN/
GaN MIS-HEMTs are improved by adding a ZnO buffer
layer. For instance, the maximum trans-conductance (Gm)
increases from 27 to 46 mSmm-1, and the IDSSmax is
improved from 97 to 204 mAmm-1. The improved
electrical properties are possibly attributed to the ameliorated interface properties by inserting ZnO buffer layer.
On the other hand, the device operation mode is changed
into the enhancement mode due to the adoption of LN
gate dielectric, and the Vth values of such AlGaN/GaN
MIS-HEMTs with and without ZnO buffer layer are ?0.4
and ?0.3 V, respectively. In general, the enhancement

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Fig. 5 Transfer characteristics of AlGaN/GaN MES-HEMTs a without LN as gate dielectrics and b with LN as gate dielectrics. Inset
being cross-sectional illustration of AlGaN/GaN MIS-HEMTs with
ZnO buffered LN ferroelectric thin films as gate dielectrics

mode is more desirable for the real application of electronic devices, simplifying the design of the GaN-based
IC and guaranteeing the fail-safe operation of GaN-based
power devices, for example, power switch. In addition,
the normally-off state implies the depletion of 2DEG due
to the negative polarization of LN thin film.
Besides the polarization in ferroelectrics which originates from the dipole formed by negative and positive ions,
there is another kind of polarization, the space-charge
polarization, which is due to the inhomogeneity of
dielectric charges. As shown in the inset in Fig. 6, the
AlGaN/GaN MIS-HEMTs with selectively fluorinated
Al2O3 gate dielectric were fabricated [38, 39]. During the
fluorination treatment by the aid of a fluorine-based plasma
immersion, negative charges are incorporated in the nearsurface layer of Al2O3 gate dielectric. Moreover, both
higher plasma activation power and longer immersion time
can incorporate more negative charges in gate dielectric.
As shown in Fig. 6, Vth positively shifts due to the incorporated negative charges in gate dielectric [38]. With a
proper dose of the incorporated negative charges, Vth
changes from a negative value to a positive one, which
means that the device operation transfers from the depletion mode to the enhancement one.

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As mentioned above, it is an interesting research topic

to adopt the AlGaN/GaN HEMTs in high-power switch.
In this application, a completely turn-off state at a zero
bias is required to guarantee the operation safety. Thus,
the AlGaN/GaN HEMTs must possess a sufficiently high
Vth. There are two methods conducted in order to further
increase the Vth of AlGaN/GaN MIS-HEMTs. The first
one is to incorporate more negative charges in the nearsurface layer of Al2O3 gate dielectric by increasing the
plasma power during the fluorination treatment. The
second one is to successively deposit another Al2O3 layer,
which acts as a blocking oxide layer, on the fluorinated
Al2O3 thin film as shown in the inset in Fig. 7 [43]. The
enhancement-mode MIS-HEMTs with and without a
blocking oxide layer were fabricated by the first and
second method mentioned above, respectively, and their
transfer characteristics are exhibited in Fig. 7. For the
convenience of comparison, the Vth values of both samples should be almost the same. It shows that the device
performance is degraded due to more severe damage

induced by the high-energy ions in plasma although Vth is

successfully further increased by the first method. On the
contrary, the blocking oxide layer formed by the second
method yields an excellent device performance, including
high Vth, large IDSS and moderate Gm.
Furthermore, both surface potential and barrier height
of the fluorinated-Al2O3/AlGaN/GaN structure were
studied by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) [39].
It shows that the reduction in the surface Fermi level (EF)
relative to valance-band maximum (VBM), VBM - EF is
about 0.2 eV after the fluorine-based plasma treatment,
which is consistent with the modification value of AlGaN
barrier height. Hence, the main reason causing the Vth to
increase after the fluorination treatment on Al2O3 gate
dielectric is not the surface potential modification but the
negative charges incorporation due to the partial substitution of oxygen atoms by fluorine ones. In addition, the
effects of negative charges in gate dielectric on energy
band and carrier concentration were calculated by a selfconsistent method in the framework of charge-control
mode. The negative-charge concentration was estimated
through the fluorine ion distribution profile measured by
XPS, which was expressed as a Gaussian distribution:
ND = N0exp(-x/k), where ND is the fluorine-ion concentration, N0 is the maximum value of fluorine-ion
concentration on Al2O3 surface, x is the depth from the
surface of the Al2O3 thin films and k is the diffusion depth
which is estimated to be about 1 nm according to the
measured fluorine ion distribution profile. The calculated
result shows that the negative charges in Al2O3 thin film
increase the conduction band. Moreover, when the negative-charge concentration increases to a critical value, for
example, N0 = 191021 cm-3, the 2DEG in the AlGaN/
GaN interface is completely depleted as shown in Fig. 8,
achieving the enhancement-mode AlGaN/GaN MISHEMTs [39].

Fig. 7 Transfer characteristics of enhancement-mode MIS-HEMTs

with and without blocking oxide layer using fluorinated Al2O3 thin
films as gate dielectrics

Fig. 8 Conduction band and carrier concentration of 2DEG in

AlGaN/GaN hetero-structure covered by fluorinated-Al2O3 thin films

Fig. 6 Dependence of Vth on process parameters of fluorine-based

plasma immersion. Inset being cross-sectional illustration of AlGaN/
GaN MIS-HEMTs with fluorinated Al2O3 thin films as gate dielectrics

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GaN-based high-electron-mobility transistors

4 High-permittivity thin films for high-voltage

GaN-based HEMTs
Besides the normally-off state, an enough high reverse
breakdown voltage is also required when the AlGaN/GaN
HEMTs is adopted in power electronic devices, as
explained by the following equation: Pout 18 IDSS max
Vbr  Vknee , where Pout is the maximum output power of
HEMTs, Vknee is the knee voltage and Vbr is the reverse
breakdown voltage. Although the AlGaN/GaN heterostructure possesses a large breakdown electric field in
theory, the electric fields on the surface and in the channel
of HEMTs are inhomogeneous. In other words, there is an
electric field peak located at the drain-side edge of gate
electrode, which can lead to a premature breakdown of
HEMTs. Thus, it is necessary to optimize the potential
distribution in the drift region and weaken the peak electric
field in the AlGaN/GaN HEMTs so as to enhance the
reverse breakdown voltage. The metal field plate was
reported to reduce the electric field peak in AlGaN/GaN
HEMTs by offering additional edges for the termination of
electric field lines [44]. Hence, one strong electric field
peak can be split into several weak electric field peaks by
multiple metal field plates. Although the AlGaN/GaN
HEMTs with high breakdown voltage is achieved by this
method, the process is too complex.
Chen [45] reported that the optimization of the potential
distribution in the drift region can be achieved by covering
a high-permittivity (HK) dielectric on the drain-gate region
of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs as shown in the inset in Fig. 9. The
electric field distribution in the AlGaN/GaN HEMTs with
and without a HK thin film covering the drain-gate region
was simulated by integrated system engineering technology computer Aided design (ISE TCAD) as shown in
Fig. 9 [46]. The permittivity of HK thin film in this simulation is about 100. Because of the large difference in
permittivity between HK thin film and AlGaN barrier layer,
HK thin film can transmit an electric flux into or extract an
electric flux from AlGaN surface. As a result, the electric

Fig. 9 Simulated electric field distribution in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs

with and without HK thin films covering drain-gate region

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field peak at the drain-side edge of gate electrode is widened by expanding to the entire gate-drain region, and thus
the breakdown voltage increases. In this method, HK thin
film acts as a field plate.
Furthermore, the effects of dielectric permittivity on the
peak electric field are simulated as shown in Fig. 10 [46,
47]. It shows that the peak electric field gradually decreases
with the increase in dielectric permittivity. However, it
should be noticed that an obvious electric field modulation
can be achieved only when the dielectric permittivity is
high enough. Taking the peak electric field without HK
dielectrics as 1.0, the relative peak electric field of 0.5 is
achieved when adopting the HK dielectrics with a permittivity of 70. However, the relative peak electric field
reaches as high as 0.9 when the permittivity of HK thin
film is 20. In this case, the electric field modulation is
negligible if adopting the most commonly used HK
dielectrics, such as Al2O3 and HfO2.
It was reported that the breakdown voltage of Si LDMOS
was increased from 95 to 360 V by covering PZT HK thin
film in the drift region [48]. In theory, the permittivity of
inorganic multi-component dielectric, for example, PZT, is
very high ([100). However, an annealing treatment in the
oxygen ambient is required during a real fabrication to
guarantee the high permittivity of such multi-component
dielectric. Besides, the difficulties in both the etching process
and the stoichiometry control during thin-film deposition
need to be overcome as well. Hence, it is hard to incorporate
the inorganic multi-component dielectrics into HEMTs.
In addition, polyimide (PI) is widely used in electronic
devices because of its excellent thermal stability and
chemical resistance. It was reported that a high permittivity
was achieved by embedding the Cr particles into the PI
matrix. Moreover, the PI/Cr composite thin film with
8 vol% Cr particles acting as a passivation layer is demonstrated in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs as shown in the inset of
Fig. 11 [46, 47]. The permittivity of the PI/Cr composite
thin film is estimated to be about 70. For the comparison

Fig. 10 Simulated effect of permittivity on relative peak electric field

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Y.-R. Li et al.

purpose, both the AlGaN/GaN HEMTs only with PI passivation and without any passivation were investigated as
well. The transfer characteristics and trans-conductances of
AlGaN/GaN HEMTs are shown in Fig. 11 [46, 47]. It
shows that the passivation can benefit the DC performance,
and that the difference between PI and PI/Cr on the passivation effect is negligible. Furthermore, the measured
result related to the breakdown properties of AlGaN/GaN
HEMTs is shown in Fig. 12 [46, 47]. The breakdown
voltage is defined as the off-state sourcedrain voltage with
a sourcedrain current of 1 mAmm-1. The breakdown
voltages of the AlGaN/GaN HEMTs without any, with PI
and with PI/Cr passivation are about 122, 156 and 248 V,
respectively.
In order to clarify the difference between PI and PI/Cr
passivations, the dependence of breakdown voltage on the
thickness of dielectric thin film was studied. As for the PIpassivated AlGaN/GaN HEMTs, a weak relationship
between the breakdown voltage and the thickness of
passivation layer is observed as shown in Fig. 13 [46].
However, the breakdown voltage almost linearly increases with adding the passivation layer thickness in the PI/
Cr-passivated AlGaN/GaN HEMTs. Therefore, the
improvement in the breakdown voltage properties can be
attributed to the surface effect for the PI-passivated AlGaN/GaN HEMTs, while that for the PI/Cr-passivated
AlGaN/GaN HEMTs is ascribed not only to the surface
effect but also to the HK field plate, which is a bulk effect

Fig. 12 Off-state currentvoltage characteristics of AlGaN/GaN

HEMTs

Fig. 13 Effect of passivation layer thickness on breakdown voltage

of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs

and thus contributes the most to the breakdown voltage

enhancement.

5 Summaries
To sum up, several experimental innovations in device
process were achieved for GaN-based power HEMTs in
our past works. Firstly, the nonpolar dielectric thin films,
for example, Al2O3, were adopted as surface passivation
layer as well as gate insulator to improve the device performance of AlGaN/GaN MISHFETs. Then, the enhancement-mode GaN HEMTs were successfully fabricated
using polar gate dielectric thin films, such as the ferroelectric LiNbO3 and the fluorinated Al2O3. In addition, the
polyimide embedded with nano-sized Cr particles as a HK
dielectric thin film with a passivation function was utilized
in GaN-based HEMTs so as to increase the breakdown
voltage.

Fig. 11 Transfer a and trans-conductance b characteristics of

AlGaN/GaN HEMTs (VDS = 10 V)

123

Acknowledgments The work was financially supported by the

National Nature Science Foundation of China (No. 50932002) and the
Research Foundation for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education
of China (No. 2012018530003).

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GaN-based high-electron-mobility transistors

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Professor Yan-Rong Li academician of the Chinese Academy

of Engineering, president of
University of Electronic Science
and Technology of China, was
born in 1962 in Sichuan Province. In 1992, he got the Ph.D.
degree from Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry,
Chinese Academy of Sciences.
He is currently the director of
the State Key Laboratory of
Electronic Thin Films and Integrated Devices. He is engaged
in electronic thin films and
devices. He invented a novel bi-axial rotation method to fabricate
large-area double-sided YBCO superconducting thin films by inverted
cylindrical sputtering. Based on the study of the initial growth
mechanism, self-buffered architecture was proposed to improve the
reliability of pyroelectric thin film sensors for nondispersion infrared
detection. Now he is working at dielectric thin films for GaN HEMTs
and MMICs, thin film sensors for aircraft engine, and HTSC coated
conductors. He twice won the prize of National Technology Invention
Award. He has got more than 20 issued Chinese patents, published
more than 200 journal articles and three books.

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