Investigation of Proton Irradiation-Induced Dynamic Characteristics on High-Performance GaN/AlGaN/GaN Schottky Barrier Diodes

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, dynamic characteristics of the single-crystal GaN-passivated lateral AlGaN/GaN Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) treated with proton irradiation were investigated. Radiation-induced changes including idealized Schottky interface and slightly degraded on-resistance (RON) were observed with 10-MeV proton irradiation at fluences of 1014 cm-2. Benefited from the existing negative polarization charges induced at GaN/AlGaN interface, the dynamic on resistance (RON,dyn) showed negligible degradation after a 1000-s-long forward current stress of 50 mA for devices irradiated or not. Furthermore, the normalized RON,dyn increased by only 14% than the initial case after a 100-s-long bias of -600 V for the irradiated devices. The high-performance lateral AlGaN/GaN SBDs with tungsten as anode metal and in-situ single-crystal GaN as passivation layer show a great potential in the harsh radiation environment of space.