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DOI 10.1007/s12598-015-0451-3
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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
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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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
6.94
6.83
6.42
MIS-HEMT
8.73
8.78
8.32
947
950
1,030
MIS-HEMT
1,150
1,090
1,260
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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
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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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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
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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
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.
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