IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS, VOL. 27, NO.

11, NOVEMBER 2006

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Study of Impact of Access Resistance on High-Frequency Performance of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs by Measurements at Low Temperatures
Nidhi, Student Member, IEEE, Toms Palacios, Student Member, IEEE, Arpan Chakraborty, Stacia Keller, and Umesh K. Mishra, Fellow, IEEE
with the fabrication of deep-submicrometer gate length devices. Among these, high access resistances have been acknowledged as a severe deterrent to high-frequency performance in GaN technology [8][10]. As shown in [11], the total delay of a HEMT is given by total = = 1 2fT,ext Cgs + Cgd (Rs + Rd ) (Cgs + Cgd ) + gm gm Rds + (Rs + Rd ) Cgd where fT,ext is the extrinsic current-gain cutoff frequency; Cgs and Cgd are the gate-to-source and gate-to-drain capacitances, respectively; Rs and Rd are the source and drain parasitic access resistances, respectively; gm is the intrinsic transconductance; and Rds is the output resistance of the device. In transistors with low parasitic resistances, the rst term of this expression dominates. However, this is not the case in deepsubmicrometer nitride-based devices, where the very high access resistances make the second and third terms also important. In fact, in these devices, Cgd is typically higher than in other material systems due to the higher channel charge density, which makes the third term even more important. Different groups, including ours, are working in methods to reduce the access resistances of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs. [Si] implantation [12], multichannel devices [13], and the use of heavily doped n-type cap layers [14] are some of the technologies currently under development to reduce the parasitic access resistances, which is expected to render a signicant improvement in the high-frequency performance of these devices. The systematic study of the effect of the access resistance on the high-frequency performance of the AlGaN/GaN HEMT is difcult, as it implies the use of AlGaN/GaN heterostructures with very low sheet resistances. Until now, the growth of high-quality AlGaN/GaN HEMTs with sheet resistances below 250 / has proven to be very challenging. To be able to evaluate very low resistances without actually having to overcome all the growth difculties, in this letter, we employ low temperature measurements. In nitride semiconductors, the mobility is limited by optical phonon scattering, and it increases as T 3/2 in lowering the temperature. By reducing the temperature to 100 K, the mobility can be increased by a factor of four [15]. This improvement signicantly reduces the

AbstractThis letter studies the effect of access resistance on the high-frequency performance of AlGaN/GaN high-electronmobility transistors. To systematically reduce the sheet access resistance, the transistors were measured at different temperatures. The increase of mobility at lower temperatures allowed more than four-fold reduction in the sheet access resistances. Both the current- and power-gain cutoff frequencies are observed to increase at low temperatures. Also, the intrinsic effective velocity has been estimated in these devices, as well as the parasitic delays involved in the nal performance. Channel charging delay, which was expected to be most sensitive to parasitics, is observed to decrease at low temperatures. However, the drain delay, intrinsic delay, and effective electron velocity remain unaffected by temperature. Index TermsAccess resistance, gallium nitride, high-electronmobility transistor (HEMT), high-frequency performance, low temperature measurements.

I. I NTRODUCTION lGaN/GaN high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) possess material properties of high current and breakdown voltage that make them attractive for power applications [1]. An output power of more than 32 W/mm has already been reported at 4 GHz [2], while 10.5 W/mm has been demonstrated at 40 GHz [3]. In spite of these excellent results and the high electron velocity predicted by the Monte Carlo simulations (> 2.5 107 cm/s) [4], the high-frequency performance of GaN-based transistors is still far from the theoretical limits. Recent developments of deep-submicrometer technology and the use of novel structures have helped to increase the highfrequency performance of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs in terms of current- and power-gain cutoff frequencies [5], [6]. The use of an ultrathin InGaN layer as a back-barrier for the twodimensional (2-D) electron gas has been shown to cause better carrier connement, resulting in current- and power-gain cutoff frequency values as high as 153 and 230 GHz, respectively [7]. However, the use of nitride-based transistors for millimeterwave applications is facing several problems like high access resistances, unreliable passivation, and challenges associated
Manuscript received June 29, 2006; revised August 28, 2006. This work was supported in part by the ONR CANE and MINE MURI projects, monitored by Dr. H. Dietrich and Dr. P. Maki. The cryogenic RF system was supported by the AFOSR (Dr. G. Witt). The review of this letter was arranged by Editor J. del Alamo. The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9560 USA (e-mail: tpalacios@mit.edu). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/LED.2006.884720

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IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS, VOL. 27, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2006

access resistances, which allows the study of their effects on the frequency performance of the devices. The HEMTs used in this letter were grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition on Si-face 4H-SiC substrates. The samples consisted of an AlN nucleation layer, a 0.7 m of semi-insulating Fe-doped GaN buffer, followed by 1.5 m of unintentionally doped GaN and a 25-nm-thick Al0.35 Ga0.65 N barrier. A 0.6-nm AlN interlayer between the GaN buffer and the AlGaN barrier was grown to improve the transport properties of the 2-D electron gas. A carrier density of 1.46 1013 cm2 and an electron mobility of 1670 cm2 /(V s) were measured by Hall technique at room temperature. At a temperature of 77 K, the charge density did not signicantly change, but the electron mobility increased by a factor of 4.25 up to about 7100 cm2 /(V s). Further growth details can be found in [16]. II. D EVICE F ABRICATION The processing of the transistors started with the denition of the source and drain contacts using optical lithography. Then, an e-beam evaporator was used to deposit a Ti/Al/Ni/Au multilayer. The contacts were annealed at 870 C for 30 s in N2 ambient using a rapid thermal annealer. The isolation of the transistors was obtained by reactive ion etching using chlorinebased chemistry, and the gates (of length 0.16 m and width 2 75 m) were dened by e-beam lithography. A Ni/Au/Ni metal stack was used as the Schottky gate contact. A Six Ny passivation layer was deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition to minimize current dispersion. The sourceto-drain and source-to-gate distances were 1.9 and 0.5 m, respectively. III. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION A liquid nitrogen-based cryogenic RF probe station was used for low temperature measurements. On wafer, s-parameter measurements of up to 20 GHz were carried out using an Agilent E8361A PNA network analyzer. The network analyzer was calibrated at each temperature by using the thru-reectionline calibration procedure. The calibration substrate was kept at the same temperature as the sample. The dc characterization of the devices was performed by an Agilent 4155B semiconductor parameter analyzer. DC measurements at different temperatures revealed that the saturation current (IDS,sat ) increases by about 15% as temperature (T ) decreases from 300 K to 120 K (Fig. 1). This increase in current is attributed to the 4 increase in mobility at lower temperatures, which signicantly decreases the parasitic resistances in the access regions of these devices. The current-gain cutoff frequency (fT ) and the power-gain cutoff frequency (fmax ) of these transistors were estimated from |h21 |2 and the unilateral power gain (U ), respectively, assuming a 20-dB/dec linear decrease. As shown in Fig. 2, fT increased by 15%20% as temperature was decreased from 300 K to 150 K. At all temperatures, the peak (fT ) occurs for the same IDS . Also, fT is observed to decrease after the peak, and the slope is almost the same for all temperatures. fmax versus IDS curves were observed to show a similar trend

Fig. 1. Variation of saturation current IDS with temperature for an AlGaN/GaN HEMT, showing an enhancement of about 15% on decreasing the temperature from 300 K to 120 K. The drain voltage was set for maximum fT and gate voltage was +2 V.

Fig. 2. Effect of drain current in fT for different temperatures. It must be noted that the peak fT occurs at the same bias current for all temperatures and the slope of fT (decreasing) is also the same for all temperatures.

with decreasing temperatures. We attribute this increase in fT and fmax to the reduction of parasitic resistances at low temperatures (see inset in Fig. 1). In an attempt to understand the increase in fT , a temperaturedependent analysis of the various delays in the device was performed using N. Molls method of evaluating delays [17]. The total delay of the electrons when crossing the gate-modulated region (total ) is composed of the transit delay of the intrinsic device (transit ), time spent by the carriers in the drain depletion region, called drain delay (drain ), and the delay associated with the charging of parasitic capacitances and resistances, called the channel charging delay (channel ). The total delay (total ) is given by total = 1 = transit + drain + channel . 2 fT

drain at a given VDS voltage can be calculated from the plot of total versus VDS IDS (Rs + Rd ) as the difference between the total delay measured at that voltage and the extrapolated delay at effective VDS = 0 V. In a similar way, the extrapolated delay in the total versus Wg /IDS curve (Wg is the gate width of the device) is equal to drain + transit . The difference between

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NIDHI et al.: ACCESS RESISTANCE ON HIGH-FREQUENCY PERFORMANCE OF AlGaN/GaN HEMTS

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Fig. 3. Variation of channel charging delay with temperature for the standard AlGaN/GaN HEMTs. channel decreases by about 35% as temperature decreases from 300 K to 120 K due to the reduction in the access resistances.

Fig. 5. Intrinsic delay versus temperature plot for the AlGaN/GaN HEMTs, showing a fairly constant intrinsic transit delay of 1.05 ps. From this value, an average electron velocity around 1.5 107 cm/s can be estimated.

transistors. Therefore, for GaN-based technology, to achieve its full high-frequency potential, the access resistances should be signicantly reduced by techniques such as implantation and n++ cap layers. If such methods are successfully implemented, we will be able to witness an important improvement in the high-frequency performance of the AlGaN/GaN HEMT technology. R EFERENCES
[1] U. K. Mishra, P. Parikh, and Y.-F. Wu, AlGaN/GaN HEMTsAn overview of device operation and applications, Proc. IEEE, vol. 90, no. 6, pp. 10221031, Jun. 2002. [2] Y.-F. Wu, A. Saxler, M. Moore, R. P. Smith, S. Sheppard, P. M. Chavarkar, T. Wisleder, U. K. Mishra, and P. Parikh, 30 W/mm GaN HEMTs by eld plate optimization, IEEE Electron Device Lett., vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 117119, Mar. 2004. [3] T. Palacios, A. Chakraborty, S. Rajan, C. Poblenz, S. Keller, S. P. DenBaars, J. S. Speck, and U. K. Mishra, High power AlGaN/GaN HEMTs for Ka-band applications, IEEE Electron Device Lett., vol. 26, no. 11, pp. 781783, Nov. 2005. [4] M. Singh and J. Singh, Design of high electron mobility devices with composite nitride channels, J. Appl. Phys., vol. 94, no. 4, pp. 24982506, Aug. 2003. [5] T. Palacios, E. Snow, Y. Pei, A. Chakraborty, S. Keller, S. P. DenBaars, and U. K. Mishra, Ge-spacer technology in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs for mm-wave applications, presented at the IEDM Tech. Dig., pp. 787789, Washington, DC, Dec. 57, 2005, Paper 32-7. [6] M. Higashiwaki, T. Matsui, and T. Mimura, AlGaN/GaN MIS-HFETs with fT of 163 GHz using Cat-CVD SiN gate-insulating and passivation layers, IEEE Electron Device Lett., vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 1618, Jan. 2006. [7] T. Palacios, A. Chakraborty, S. Heikman, S. Keller, S. P. DenBaars, and U. K. Mishra, AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors with InGaN back-barrier, IEEE Electron Device Lett., vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 1315, Jan. 2006. [8] T. Palacios, S. Rajan, A. Chakraborty, S. Heikman, S. Keller, S. P. DenBaars, and U. K. Mishra, Inuence of the dynamic access resistance in the gm and fT linearity of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs, IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, vol. 52, no. 10, pp. 21172123, Oct. 2005. [9] C. R. Bolognesi, A. C. Kwan, and D. W. DiSanto, Transistor delay analysis and effective channel velocity extraction in AlGaN/GaN HFETs, in IEDM Tech. Dig., 2002, pp. 685688. [10] T. Inoue, Y. Ando, K. Kasahara, Y. Okamoto, T. Nakayama, H. Miyamoto, and M. Kuzuhara, Advanced RF characterization and delay-time analysis of short channel AlGaN/GaN heterojunction FETs, IEICE Trans. Electron., vol. E86-C, no. 10, pp. 20652070, 2003. [11] P. J. Tasker and B. Hughes, Importance of source and drain resistance to the maximum fT of millimeter-wave MODFETs, IEEE Electron Device Lett., vol. 10, no. 7, pp. 291293, Jul. 1989. [12] F. Recht, L. McCarthy, S. Rajan, A. Chakraborty, C. Poblenz, A. Corrion, J. S. Speck, and U. K. Mishra, Nonalloyed ohmic contacts in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs by ion implantation with reduced activation annealing temperature, IEEE Electron Device Lett., vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 205207, Apr. 2006.

Fig. 4.

Effect of temperature in the drain delay.

total and this delay is channel . Finally, the effective electron velocity in the channel (ve ) can be calculated as ve = Lg transit .

In our devices, the channel charging delay channel at VDS = 5 V decreases by about 35% as temperature is decreased from 300 K to 120 K (Fig. 3). At low temperatures, the access resistances decrease due to the higher electron mobility in the channel, hence the RC time constant that dominates channel decreases. These results were observed in more than ten different devices within a 10% error bar. On the other hand, neither drain nor transit varies with temperature (see Figs. 4 and 5). This measurement conrms that these values do not depend on the access resistances but are intrinsic characteristics of the transistor. From the transit delay, an effective electron velocity 1.52 107 cm/s can be estimated (Fig. 5). This value is almost constant with temperature, as predicted by preliminary Monte Carlo simulations [18]. IV. C ONCLUSION In this letter, the effect of access resistance on fT has been investigated by low temperature measurements. It was conrmed that parasitics play an important role in degrading the high-frequency performance of state-of-the-art AlGaN/GaN

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[13] T. Palacios, A. Chini, D. Buttari, S. Heikman, A. Chakraborty, S. Keller, S. P. DenBaars, and U. K. Mishra, Use of double-channel heterostructures to improve the access resistance and linearity in GaN-based HEMTs, IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 562565, Mar. 2006. [14] M. Micovic, T. Tsen, M. Hu, P. Hashimoto, P. J. Willadsen, I. Milosavljevic, A. Schmitz, M. Antcliffe, D. Zhender, J. S. Moon, W. S. Wong, and D. Chow, GaN enhancement/depletion-mode FET logic for mixed signal applications, Electron. Lett., vol. 41, no. 19, pp. 10811082, Sep. 2005.

[15] D. Jena, Y. Smorchkova, C. Elsass, A. C. Gossard, and U. K. Mishra, Electron Transport and Intrinsic Mobility Limits in Two-Dimensional Electron Gases of IIIV Nitride Heterostructures, 2001. arXiv:cond-mat\0103461. [16] S. Heikman, S. Keller, D. S. Green, S. P. DenBaars, and U. K. Mishra, High conductivity modulation doped AlGaN/GaN multiple channel heterostructures, J. Appl. Phys., vol. 94, no. 8, pp. 53215325, Oct. 2003. [17] N. Moll, M. R. Hueschen, and A. F. Colbrie, Pulse-doped AlGaAs/ InGaAs pseudomorphic MODFETs, IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, vol. 35, no. 7, pp. 879886, Jul. 1988. [18] M. Singh, Y. Wu, and J. Singh, 2004, Personal communication.

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