Normally-off operations in partially-gate-recessed AlTiO/AlGaN/GaN field-effect transistors based on interface charge engineering

Abstract

We report normally-off operations in partially-gate-recessed AlxTiyO(AlTiO)/AlGaN/GaN metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) field-effect transistors (FETs), where aluminum titanium oxide AlTiO, an alloy of Al2O3 and TiO2, is employed as a gate insulator. Since AlTiO is useful for interface charge engineering owing to a trend that the AlTiO/AlGaN interface fixed charge is suppressed in comparison with Al2O3, we investigated combining the interface charge engineering with a partial gate recess method for AlTiO/AlGaN/GaN MIS-FETs. For AlTiO with a composition of x/(x+y)=0.73, a suppressed positive interface fixed charge at the AlTiO/recessed-AlGaN interface leads to a positive slope in the relation between the threshold voltage and the AlTiO insulator thickness. As a result, we successfully obtained normally-off operations in partially-gate-recessed AlTiO/AlGaN/GaN MIS-FETs with favorable performances, such as a threshold voltage of 1.7 V, an on-resistance of 9.5Ωmm, an output current of 450 mA/mm, a low sub-threshold swing of 65 mV/decade, and a rather high electron mobility of 730cm2/Vs. The results show that the interface charge engineering in combination with partial gate recess is effective for the GaN-based normally-off device technology.