Investigation of back barrier material effects on the scalability of Fe-doped recess-gated AlN/GaN HEMTs for next generation RF power electronics

Abstract

GaN HEMTs (high-electron-mobility transistors) on SiC (silicon carbide) wafer with back barrier structures have gained much attention owing to the improved sheet charge density through enhanced carrier confinement, which can accomplish further improvement of RF performance. In this simulation work, the influence of different back barrier materials on RF & DC performance of Fe-doped recess gated AlN/GaN HEMT is explored. This paper also investigates the back barrier thickness effects on carrier confinement of each structure; the results show that better confinement of carriers in the GaN channel is accompanied by an optimized thickness for each back barrier material besides which, the performance is comparatively degraded. As back-barrier based structures have the capability to reduce SCEs by enhancing the carrier confinement, the investigation is done to analyse the impact of gate length scalability on the DC & RF characteristics of the proposed device. Lg = 60 nm Fe-doped recess-gated AlN/GaN HEMT with an optimized AlGaN back barrier thickness of 60 nm provided a peak drain current of 4.63 A/mm, the highest transconductance of 2333 mS/mm, and the highest cut-off frequency of 316.6 GHz, and this outstanding DC/RF performance is due to strong carrier confinement and reduced leakage current. This outstanding performance makes them a potential choice for future RF power electronics and MMIC design.