Ta-based interface ohmic contacts to AlGaN/GaN heterostructures

Abstract

Al/Ti based metallization is commonly used for ohmic contacts to n-GaN and related compounds. We have previously reported an ohmic contact scheme specially designed for AlGaN/GaN heterostructure field-effect transistors (HFETs) [D. Qiao et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 74, 2652 (1999)]. This scheme, referred to as the “advancing interface” contact, takes advantage of the interfacial reactions between the metal layers and the AlGaN barrier layer in the HFET structure. These reactions consume a portion of the barrier, thus facilitating carrier tunneling from the source/drain regions to the channel region. The advancing interface approach has led to consistently low contact resistance on Al0.25Ga0.75N/GaN HFETs. There are two drawbacks of the Al/Ti based advancing interface scheme, (i) it requires a capping layer for the ohmic formation annealing since Ti is too reactive and is easily oxidized when annealing is performed in pure N2 or even in forming gas, and (ii) the atomic number of Al and that of Ti are too low to yield efficient backscattered electron emission for e-beam lithographic alignment purposes. In this work, we investigated a Ta based advancing interface contact scheme for the HFET structures. We found that the presence of Ta in this ohmic scheme leads to (1) a specific contact resistivity as low as 5×10−7 Ω cm2, (2) efficient electron emission for e-beam lithographic alignment, and (3) elimination of the capping layer for the ohmic annealing.