Influence of interface contamination on transport properties of two-dimensional electron gas in selective area growth AlGaN/GaN heterostructure

Abstract

The selective area growth (SAG) technique has been proved to be an effective method to achieve trench gate normally-off AlGaN/GaN MOSFET. In this paper, the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) transport properties of SAG AlGaN/GaN heterostructure are investigated for samples with different insertion layers. As the thickness of the GaN insertion layer increases, the mobility of 2DEG drops at first and then increases dramatically. This is explained by a shift of the location of the 2DEG from the GaN template into the GaN insertion layer. Interface contamination at the template/insertion layer interface is found to be the reason of the degradation of the transport properties. Through optimizing the thickness of the SAG GaN insertion layer, 2DEG mobility is similar to the value of as-grown AlGaN/GaN heterostructure. The proper thickness of SAG GaN insertion layer for device fabrication is 24 nm referring to the variation in 2DEG transport properties.