Minimization of leakage current of recessed gate AlGaN/GaN HEMTs by optimizing the dry-etching process

Abstract

The backward current of Schottky contacts on unintentionally doped GaN samples prepared by different dry-etching methods was investigated. It was found that an ion beam etching (IBE) process with an accelerating voltage of 250 V under an angle of 20 degrees to minimize channeling achieves the best results. The backward current in this case is 4 × 10−10 A/µm2 compared to the backward current of the unetched sample of 1 × 10−7 A/µm2 at −100 V. With this process, recessed gate HEMTs on AlGaN/GaN heterostructures grown by low pressure MOVPE were fabricated and compared to HEMTs without recess. The applied gate recess etching technique improves the leakage current by nearly a factor of two. The maximum transconductance is improved from 40 mS/mm to 60 mS/mm at a gate length of 4 µm.