Charge control and mobility in AlGaN/GaN transistors: Experimental and theoretical studies

Abstract

In this article we report on two dimensional sheet charge and mobility in GaN/AlGaN heterostructure field effect transistors. Both experimental and theoretical results are presented. Experimental results are reported on samples grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Theoretical studies are done to examine how spontaneous polarization and piezoelectric effect control the sheet charge density. The studies also focus on how interface roughness, aluminum mole fraction in the barrier and phonon scattering influence mobility. We find that interface roughness is a dominant source of scattering in the samples reported. Due to the variation in growth techniques we find that the MBE samples have a smoother interface compared to the MOCVD samples. By carefully fitting the experimental data we present results on interface roughness parameters for MBE and MOCVD samples.