Threshold Voltage Improvement and Leakage Reduction of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs Using Dual-Layer SiNx Stressors

2019/07/31 by Wei‐Chih Cheng, Cheng, Wei-Chih, Minghao He +19
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Applied Physics (physics.app-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Ga2O3 and related materials #GaN-based semiconductor devices and materials #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Semiconductor materials and devices #Silicon Carbide Semiconductor Technologies

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1908.00125

openalex publication_date 2019/07/31 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

In this work, AlGaN/GaN HEMTs with dual-layer SiNx stressors (composed of a low-stress layer and a high-stress layer) were investigated. The low-stress padding layer solved the surface damage problem caused during the deposition of the high-stress SiNx, and provided a good passivated interface. The HEMTs with dual-layer stressors showed a 1 V increase in the threshold voltage (Vth) with comparable on-current and RF current gain to those without stressors. Moreover, the off-current (I_off) was shown to be reduced by one to three orders of magnitude in the strained devices as a result of the lower electric field in AlGaN, which suppressed the gate injection current. The dual-layer stressor scheme supports strain engineering as an effective approach in the pursuit of the normally-off operation of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs.

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