A study on III-nitride recessed-gate field-effect transistors using a remote-oxygen-plasma treatment

Abstract

We report a comparative study of the device performance of III-nitride (III-N) heterojunction field-effect transistors (HFETs) and metal-insulator-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MISFETs). The influence of a remote-oxygen-plasma treatment was investigated. The plasma-treated recessed-gate HFETs and MISFETs show normally-off characteristics with higher peak transconductance, lower sub-threshold slope, smaller hysteresis. An on-off ratio greater than 2.2E11 with a significant suppression of gate leakage can be achieved in plasma-treated III-N MISFETs. A drain current transient measurement was performed to analyze the traps in these devices and possible origins of these traps are studied. Six traps with characteristic time constants (τ) ranging from 180 s to 3 ms are identified in both HFETs and MISFETs, in addition to a trap which is associated with the ALD-grown gate dielectrics for the MISFETs. The results suggest that improved device performance in these plasma-treated III-N FETs is attributed to the reduced trap states with τ < 400 ms, which are located on III-N surfaces. The slower traps (τ > 2 s) cannot be reduced by the plasma treatment and are related to the oxygen and carbon impurities and the buffer traps in the bulk semiconductors.