The Influence of Design on Electrical Performance of AlGaN/GaN Lateral Schottky Barrier Diodes for Energy-Efficient Power Applications

Egor Polyntsev,Evgeny Erofeev,Igor Yunusov

doi:10.3390/electronics10222802

Egor Polyntsev, Evgeny Erofeev + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10222802

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Abstract

In this paper, lateral AlGaN/GaN Schottky barrier diodes are investigated in terms of anode construction and diode structure. An original GaN Schottky diode manufacturing-process flow was developed. A set of experiments was carried out to verify dependences between electrical parameters of the diode, such as reverse and forward currents, ON-state voltage, forward voltage and capacitance, anode-to-cathode distance, length of field plate, anode length, Schottky contact material, subanode recess depth, and epitaxial structure type. It was found that diodes of SiN/Al0.23Ga0.77N/GaN epi structure with Ni-based anodes demonstrated two orders of magnitude lower reverse currents than diodes with GaN/Al0.25Ga0.75N/GaN epitaxial structure. Diodes with Ni-based anodes demonstrated lower VON and higher IF compared with diodes with Pt-based anodes. As a result of these investigations, an optimal set of parameters was selected, providing the following electrical characteristics: VON = 0.6 (at IF = 1 mA/mm), forward voltage of the diode VF = 1.6 V (at IF = 100 mA/mm), maximum reverse voltage VR = 300 V, reverse leakage current IR = 0.04 μA/mm (at VR = −200 V), and total capacitance C = 3.6 pF/mm (at f = 1 MHz and 0 V DC bias). Obtained electrical characteristics of the lateral Schottky barrier diode demonstrate great potential for use in energy-efficient power applications, such as 5G multiband and multistandard wireless base stations.

Highlights

Microwave photonics is a new, scientific, technical and technological direction, which appeared as a result of the integration of optoelectronics and microwave radioelectronics
The GaN-based SBDs were manufactured on commercial AlGaN/GaN epitaxial structures on SiC wafer grown by Enkris Semiconductor [31]
It was found that diodes with SiN/Al0.23Ga0.77N/GaN epitaxial structures and Ni-based Schottky contact (SC) demonstrate, by two orders of magnitude, lower reverse currents than diodes with GaN/Al0.25Ga0.75N/GaN epitaxial structures

Summary

Introduction

Microwave photonics is a new, scientific, technical and technological direction, which appeared as a result of the integration of optoelectronics and microwave radioelectronics. The transition to fifth-generation networks places serious demands on the infrastructure; it is required to install five times more base stations per square kilometer, each of which consumes an average of 1.1 kW [8] All this makes for serious demands on the energy efficiency of all engineering systems, including power systems. In works [15,16,17,20,21,22,23], Ni was used as the Schottky barrier metal, which resulted in VON = 0.37–0.5 V and reverse current around IR = 10−6 A/mm at VR = −200 V. In work [24], SBDs with SiN as the cap layer demonstrated 15 times lower reverse leakage currents compared with samples with a GaN+SiN cap layer. The work purposes the approbation of previously reported dependencies between SBD design and its electrical parameters on epitaxial structures and SBDs of original design, proposed in this work

Materials and Methods

Findings

Conclusions