VOL. 3, NO.

4, APRIL 2019 4500404

Chemical and biological sensors

Linear and Circular AlGaN/AlN/GaN MOS-HEMT-based pH Sensor on Si

Substrate: A Comparative Analysis
Arathy Varghese1∗ , Chinnamuthan Periasamy1∗∗ , Lava Bhargava1∗∗ , Surani Bin Dolmanan2 ,
and Sudhiranjan Tripathy2
1 Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, Rajasthan 302017, India
2 Institute
of Materials Research and Engineering, Agency for Science, Technology, and Research, 2 Fusionopolisway 138634,
Singapore
∗ Graduate Student Member, IEEE
∗∗ Member, IEEE

Manuscript received March 4, 2019; revised March 22, 2019; accepted April 1, 2019. Date of publication April 4, 2019; date of current version April 22, 2019.

Abstract—In this article, sensitivity enhancement of undoped AlGaN/AlN/GaN HEMT for pH detection by using dielectric (10
nm Al2 O3 )-based MOS-gated structure is demonstrated. Linear and circular MOS-HEMT (L-MOSHEMT and C-MOSHEMT,
respectively) with similar dimensions are fabricated on Si substrate. Novel sensing metric gd /IDS (drain conductance to
current ratio) is introduced, and C-MOSHEMT attains the highest sensitivity of 1.74 mA/pH and 58 mV−1 /pH when change
in drain current (IDS ) and gd /IDS are taken as the sensing metrics, respectively.

Index Terms—Chemical and biological sensors, AlGaN/GaN HEMT, Al2 O3 , circular HEMT, drain conductance, gate dielectric, MOS-
HEMT, pH detection.

I. INTRODUCTION The advantage of three terminal-based sensors is that individual

High-sensitivity pH detection has gained huge research focus be-
cause the variation in pH can be effectively used as the indicator for
malignant tumors and acidosis-related diseases. The nominal value
of pH in humans is between 7.35 and 7.45 [1]. The literature reports
two terminal-based un-gated nitride HEMTs with high sensitivity to
electrolytic solutions [2]. The sensing response can be effectively
modeled as the change in the channel potential due to the change in
surface charge at the top AlGaN surface due to formation of hydroxyl
group that depends on the pH value of the solution to be tested. The
limitation of these devices is that they are not compatible with the
standard CMOS-based readout circuitry and, hence, results in inte-
gration issues for application in intelligent medical care systems [3],
[4]. To ensure compatibility with the systems in use, three terminal
transistors-based sensors were developed where gate functionalization
was used to attain physical/chemical or bio-detection [5]. However,
this led to another drawback as sensing requires the use of higher gate
lengths, which degrades device performance in terms of low resolution
and device stability. So, there exists a trade-off between sensitivity and
stability of device [6]. With increase in gate length, background noise
increases and stability decreases. This brings forth the requirement
of gate engineering to attain higher sensitivities without affecting the
device stability.
The initial HEMT and FET chemical/bio sensors developed were
two terminal based [3], [7]; later, three terminal based devices were
developed and became an active region for research [8], [9]. The three
terminal based devices have similar characteristics both electrical and
structural like conventional FET devices [10], thereby making their
monolithic integration and batch fabrication easier with lower cost and
time overheads [8].
Corresponding author: Chinnamuthan Periasamy (cpsamy.ece@mnit.ac.in).
Associate Editor: M. Kraft.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LSENS.2019.2909291
control over the sensors can be attained in a sensor array using the
gate electrode, and this becomes critical for sensor array processing
[11]. Recently, in 2018, a high resolution interdigitated HEMT pH
sensor with multiple segments achieving sensitivity of 1.35 mA/pH
were reported, but the device faces the limitation of complex design
[1]. In last decade, a couple of other HEMT-based pH sensors were
reported [12]–[14]; however, they faced the limitation of low resolution
due to increased spacing between the device 2DEG and the sensing
area, as well as poor binding or pH-immobilization.
Simulation-based optimization of device design and its analyt-
ical modeling has also gained recent research attention with fo-
cus on enhancement of device sensitivity [15]. Recently, in 2018,
an extended gate HEMT pH sensor was demonstrated with sen-
sitivity of 20.84 μA/pH [16]; however, both three terminal- and
two terminal-based sensor systems developed till date face the ba-
sic limitation of low resolution, which hinders its development and
commercialization.
In this work, to increase device resolution without affecting stabil-
ity, MOS-gated devices have been fabricated to increase the sensitivity
and reduce the gate leakage involved. Further, to increase sensing area
without increasing the length or width of the device gate, which can
lead to stability issues, a circular/ring-gated device has been fabricated
with same dimensions as the linear HEMT s(Gate length, L G = 3 μm,
source to gate spacing LSG = 4 μm and gate to drain spacing LGD =
8 μm). Fig. 1 shows the SEM images of both the fabricated devices
under test. The concept of a C-MOSHEMT sensor is being introduced
for the first time for pH detection, while the use of an MOS-gated de-
vice has been seen in high-frequency and high-power domains. Good
sensing performance through proper coupling of the surface poten-
tial into the device channel with minimal gate leakage and enhanced
gm makes the device potential superior over the current devices. C-
MOSHEMT though generated lower output current than the linear
device, and the gm enhancement with pH lead to enhanced sensitivity.
A new sensing metric, the drain conductance (gd ) to current ratio is
introduced through this work, and high sensitivities are attained by

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4500404
Fig. 1. (a). Schematic diagram of the device with layer and contact
thicknesses specified and SEM images of the fabricated linear and
circular HEMTs with similar dimensions LSG = 4, L G = 3, and LGD = 9
μm. (b) L-MOSHEMT with source (right) and drain (left) pads on either
side of the gate finger and gate pad on top. (c) C-MOSHEMT with
central cylindrical source, circular gate ring with a cylindrical gate pad
around source, and outer drain ring.
both L-MOSHEMT and C-MOSHEMT compared to Schottky-gated
and gateless HEMT sensors, respectively [1].
II. FABRICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION
A p-type Si substrate with <111> orientation has been used for
the growth of approximately 1.9 μm AlGaN/GaN HEMT stack. The
epitaxial growth was carried out using an AIXTRON CCS Metal Or-
ganic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) system. The full HEMT
stack includes a ∼20 nm thick low-temperature AlN nucleation layer
followed by a high-temperature AlN of ∼140 nm and graded transi-
tion scheme of Alx Ga1−x N buffer layers with sequentially decreasing
mole fractions from 0.58 to 0.04, thereby decreasing the scattering
in 2DEG channel that results from dislocation density [17]. The tran-
sition scheme AlGaN step-graded growth is followed by the HEMT
stack of GaN layer (unintentionally C-doped buffer and channel layers:
910 nm and 140 nm), ∼1.0 nm AlN layer to increase the conduction
band offset and reduce the scattering effects due to the ternary com-
pound material used, the undoped Al0.23 Ga0.77 N barrier layer with an
Al composition of 23%, and a thin GaN cap layer of 2 nm. No doping
has been used so that effect of noise that can affect the device stability
can be kept at lowest possible. The epitaxial stack grown exhibited an
average sheet carrier density (n s ): 1.1 × 1013 cm−2 , with a sheet resis-
tance (Rs ) of 370 ohm/sq and Hall mobility (μ) of 1500 cm2 /V.s. The
HRXRD analysis of the deposited HEMT stack revealed the results
shown in Table 1. The source/drain patterning followed by metalliza-
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VOL. 3, NO. 4, APRIL 2019
Table 1. HRXRD Data From CVD Grown epi-Layered Wafer.
tion was done using a Tecport e-beam evaporator, followed by post
annealing, which was done at 850 °C for 30 s.
The deposited ohmic stack comprises Ti, Al, Ni, and Au metals with
thicknesses of 20, 120, 30, and 40 nm, respectively. The mesa leakage
in device is eliminated by mesa isolation using chlorine-based induc-
tively coupled plasma-reactive ion etching (Cl2 -ICP-RIE). An Si3 N4
passivation layer of 100 nm was deposited using plasma-enhanced
chemical vapor deposition, which later got etched for gate patterning.
The passivation etch was attained using BCl3 /Cl2 ICP-RIE, and the
passivation layer here acted as the mask for the gate metallization.
The gate oxide ∼10 nm Al2 O3 is deposited using an atomic layer
deposition, which acts as a passivation layer too, forming a double
passivation scheme between source/gate and gate/drain regions. The
gate metal (Ni/Au: 20 nm/70 nm) is then deposited using e-beam
evaporation followed by low temperature annealing, which is done at
400 °C for 5 min. Finally, the source/drain pad openings were achieved
by patterning and etching of the deposited Al2 O3 and Si3 N4 using ICP-
RIE. However, when circular HEMT is considered, the source to drain
channel gets automatically isolated from the surroundings, and pro-
cesses related to both patterning and etching for mesa isolation can
be eliminated, which reduces the cost and process time involved in
fabrication.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Device pH sensing characteristics are analyzed with the aid of a
B1500A Agilent Device Analyzer at room temperature. It is seen
that C-MOSHEMT exhibits lower ON current than L-MOSHEMT
(at pH = 7). To perform pH sensing, three pH buffer samples from
Merck’s Chemicals were chosen, and the pH solutions were made in
Milli-Q water. For sensitivity analysis, the pH samples were introduced
on to the device gate area after proper encapsulation of source and
drain, and average sensitivity is given by
  (I D(pH=4) − I D(pH=7) ) + (I D(pH=7) − I D(pH=9.2) )
A 7−4 9.2 − 7
Avg.Sensitivity = .
pH 2
(1)
All currents dealt with in here are currents per 100 μm device
width, and no gate biasing has been applied while sensing was done.
The device currents are normalized with respect to the gate width to
make feasible the comparison between the linear and circular device.
In C-MOSHEMT, the perimeter of the inner gate ring is taken as the
device and the width of L-MOSHEMT is 100 μm. The same (1) can
be used for other parameters-based sensitivity analysis by replacing
the drain current in the equation by the sensing metric of interest. The
detection principle is the variation in surface charge due to adsorption
of charged/polar molecules on the surface of the device gate which
gets capacitively coupled into the channel and modulates the device
characteristics. In this work, our focus is on using the device output
characteristics as sensing metric due to easier extraction possible. The
variation of sensing metrics can be explained by taking examples of
device drain current, when an acidic solution is introduced on the
 VOL. 3, NO. 4, APRIL 2019 4500404

Fig. 2. (a) Variation in device drain currents with pH immobilization.

(b) Average drain current sensitivity of the device as a function of VDS
calculated using (1).

device gate. As H+ concentration is higher than OH− concentration,

surface develops a net positive charge, which acts as a small positive
gate bias applied, thereby increasing the current in the device by
increasing the charge concentration in the 2DEG channel and vice
versa for basic solutions
In the linear region, the L-MOSHEMT is found to outperform
C-MOSHEMT with a small margin, while in the saturation region,
C-MOSHEMT shows higher sensitivity than L-MOSHEMT. As
HEMT device sensors make use of saturation drain current as sens- Fig. 3. (a). Channel conductance variation with pH immobilization,
ing metric, C-MOSHEMTs prove to be better candidates for chemi- (b) gd sensitivity, (c) drain conductance to current ratio (gd /IDS ) variation
cal/biodetection than the L-MOSHEMT counterpart. Even in the lin- with pH immobilization, and (d) gd /IDS sensitivity.
ear regime, both devices give almost similar sensitivities, as shown
in Fig. 2(a) and (b). So, for low-voltage operations and situations Table 2. Comparison of Sensitivities: L-MOSHEMT and
where cost/energy efficiency is critical, circular HEMTs overpower C-MOSHEMT.
the linear devices in terms of ease of fabrication and higher sensitiv-
ities attained through the larger sensing area available. Spanning the
same cross sectional area on the wafer and with same dimensions of
channel length and spacings from S/D electrodes, larger area can be
attained by C-MOSHEMT as the gate here has a ring structure; hence,
greater channel 2DEG control canbe attainedleading to higher sensi-
tivities. The channel conductance gd = ∂∂VIDSDS
in the linear region and
analog performance metric gd /IDS ratios can also be used as sensing The fabricated devices exhibit a higher sensitivity than the gated
parameters to analyze the device sensitivity for low power applica- and ungated HEMT sensors recently reported by Dong et al. [1] on
tions. Fig. 3(a) and (b) shows the variation in channel conductance sapphire substrates, where the obtained maximum sensitivity was
with pH immobilization. It can be observed that the drain conduc- about 1.35 mA/pH. Our findings show a sensitivity figure of merit
tance varies by tens of mS/mm in both linear and circular devices, by using MOSHEMT stack on low-cost and scalable Si-substrates for
and C-MOSHEMT exhibits a higher sensitivity. Another parameter of deployment, compared to literature reports on HEMT sensors [16],
importance that can be used in sensing is the current ratio gd /IDS in [19], [20]. The improved sensing metrics can be attributed to the im-
low power devices such as tunnel field-effect transistors. When used proved gate design with dielectric modulation that increases the device
in sensing, maximum transconductance (gm = ∂∂VIGS D
) is extracted, and gm . There are also further scopes to improve the sensitivity based on
gm /IDS [18] ratio has been used as sensing metric. High sensitivities our findings, where electrical characteristics of the 2DEG functions
are exhibited by both the devices, and C-MOSHEMT exhibits higher on large area Si substrates that control the transport parameters can be
sensitivity of 58 mV−1 , as shown in Fig. 3(c) and (d). The higher tuned by the epitaxial growth (e.g., thickness of AlGaN-barrier, GaN-
sensitivities attained can be attributed to the higher gm when high k cap, and GaN channel growth conditions) and types of metal-oxide
Al2 O3 is used as the gate dielectric and gm is the prominent sensing gate stacks.
metric since after all, the sensitivity can be simply explained as the
change in the device current due to modulation of 2DEG density in
the channel with bio/chemical interaction based surface gate potential IV. CONCLUSION
generation. So, the higher the device gm , the higher the resolution and
the sensitivity attained will be. The linearity of the sensors is proved In this work, we have proposed gated AlGaN/AlN/GaN MOS-
by the linear increase in drain current and channel conductance when HEMTs with modified epitaxial scheme to be used in pH detec-
pH value of solution is increased from basic range to acidic, and the tion. L-MOSHEMT and C-MOSHEMT with Al2 O3 as gate dielectric
stability of the device has also been ensured by testing multiple devices have been fabricated on Si <111> substrates, and device sensitiv-
with similar dimensions and ensuring similar output characteristics. ity/resolution has been investigated for pH detection. The devices give
The comparison between the sensitivities of both the devices for all higher sensitivity than the existing systems, and within the two devices
three types of sensing metrics discussed in this work is summarized compared, C-MOSHEMT gives better performance in terms of better
in Table 2. resolution, lower cost, and lower fabrication complexity involved.

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4500404
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported in part by DST-SERB under Grant YSS/2015/000174 and
in part by Young Faculty Research Fellowship under Visvesvaraya PhD Scheme, MeitY,
Government of India, under Ref No: PhDMLA-4(17)/2014. The authors also acknowledge
the support of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, where parts of the fabrication and
characterization have been done under INUP.
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