Study of HfAlO/AlGaN/GaN MOS-HEMT with source field plate structure for improved breakdown voltage

Abstract In the present paper, we propose a novel device structure by introducing a source field-plated AlGaN/GaN in the metal oxide Semiconductor high electron mobility transistors (MOS-HEMT) structure having a relatively short gate length and short gate-to-drain distances. The 2D breakdown analysis is performed using Sentaurus TCAD simulator. The effects of gate to drain distance ( L g d ), source field plate length ( L f p ) and passivation layer thickness ( t p ) on breakdown voltage (BV) is analyzed. The simulations are done using the drift–diffusion (DD) model, which is calibrated/validated with the previously published experimental results. The breakdown voltage is observed to increase with increase in L f p and t p . Very high breakdown voltage of 752.8 V is obtained by optimizing the L f p to 3 µm and t p to 200 nm at a fixed gate to drain distance of 3.4 µm. The results show a great potential application of the ultra-thin HfAlO source field plated AlGaN/GaN MOS-HEMT to deliver high currents and power densities in high power microwave technologies.

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