Impact of recess etching and surface treatments on ohmic contacts regrown by molecular-beam epitaxy for AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors

Abstract

Ohmic contacts fabricated by regrowth of n+ GaN are favorable alternatives to metal-stack-based alloyed contacts in GaN-based high electron mobility transistors. In this paper, the influence of reactive ion dry etching prior to regrowth on the contact resistance in AlGaN/GaN devices is discussed. We demonstrate that the dry etch conditions modify the surface band bending, dangling bond density, and the sidewall depletion width, which influences the contact resistance of regrown contacts. The impact of chemical surface treatments performed prior to regrowth is also investigated. The sensitivity of the contact resistance to the surface treatments is found to depend upon the dangling bond density of the sidewall facets exposed after dry etching. A theoretical model has been developed in order to explain the observed trends.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Jul 25, 2016
Source ID
10.1063/1.4959831

Entities

People

  • E. Monroy
  • M. Azize
  • M. Beeler
  • S. Joglekar
  • Tomás Palacios

Organizations

  • Grenoble Alpes University
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Office of Naval Research

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Materials science

Readers

  • Semiconductor Device Technology

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics
  • Microelectronics - Graphene