Demonstration of InAlN/AlGaN high electron mobility transistors with an enhanced breakdown voltage by pulsed metal organic chemical vapor deposition

Abstract

In this work, InAlN/AlGaN heterostructures employing wider bandgap AlGaN instead of conventional GaN channel were grown on sapphire substrate by pulsed metal organic chemical vapor deposition, where the nominal Al composition in InAlN barrier and AlGaN channel were chosen to be 83% and 5%, respectively, to achieve close lattice-matched condition. An electron mobility of 511 cm2/V s along with a sheet carrier density of 1.88 × 1013 cm−2 were revealed in the prepared heterostructures, both of which were lower compared with lattice-matched InAlN/GaN due to increased intrinsic alloy disorder scattering resulting from AlGaN channel and compressively piezoelectric polarization in barrier, respectively. While the high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) processed on these structures not only exhibited a sufficiently high drain output current density of 854 mA/mm but also demonstrated a significantly enhanced breakdown voltage of 87 V, which is twice higher than that of reported InAlN/GaN HEMT with the same device dimension, potential characteristics for high-voltage operation of GaN-based electronic devices.