Mechanism of high-fluence proton induced electrical degradation in AlGaN/GaN high-electron-mobility transistors

Abstract

The effects of displacement damage induced by 3 and 6 MeV protons in AlGaN/GaN high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) are investigated. For the 6 MeV protons at a dose of 5 × 1014 cm−2, a 12% decrease in saturation current, a 3.8% decrease in the peak transconductance, a 0.3 V positive shift of the threshold voltage, and a three-to fourfold decrease in reverse gate leakage current are observed compared with the pre-irradiation values. The main degradation mechanism is considered to be the generation of deep trap states in the band gap, which remove electrons and reduce the carrier mobility in a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG). Both the carrier removal rate and negatively charged trap density can be extracted, which shows that about 3500 proton injections lead to one carrier removal. Proton fluence and energy are found to be two key parameters that affect the degradation characteristics of irradiated GaN HEMTs.