Electrical Traps in Microwave Materials.

Abstract

This program was the final year of a three-year program to identify the sources of trapping centers in gallium arsenide semiconductor devices, to correlate this evidence with device effects and to eliminate or minimize these effects. During the first year of the program we assembled measurement apparatus and established a technique, based on drain current transients, in determining trap activation energies on GaAs FET's using a modification of deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS). During the second year we applied the new DLTS measurement technique, and variations of it, to numerous samples chosen to provide comparisons of different growth and device processing methods. The data has been supplemented by other pulsed and optical experiments which are described in the Second Interim Report. During the final year, we used transient capacitance DLTS techniques by utilizing special FET structures (fat FET's) and specially-doped test wafers. A hole trap (at 0.45 eV due to copper) was identified in p-GaAs and an electron trap at 0.34 eV in an n-GaAs IMPATT diode was detected. A technique was devised for identifying trap energy levels from a single DLTS temperature sweep. Surface traps, whose signature differs qualitatively from bulk trap signatures, were discovered in FET wafers.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 1978
Accession Number
ADA055086

Entities

People

  • Lowell H. Holway Jr.
  • Michael Adlerstein

Organizations

  • RTX

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Compound Semiconductors
  • Conduction Bands
  • Detection
  • Emission
  • Energy Bands
  • Energy Levels
  • Equations
  • Fermi Levels
  • Field Effect Transistors
  • Gallium Arsenides
  • Low Temperature
  • Measurement
  • Modules (Electronics)
  • Semiconductor Devices
  • Semiconductors
  • Space Charge
  • Transistors

Fields of Study

  • Materials science

Readers

  • Semiconductor Device Technology
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics