838
8, AUGUST 2008
AlGaN/GaN MOS-HEMT With HfO2 Dielectric and
Al2O3 Interfacial Passivation Layer Grown by
Atomic Layer Deposition
Yuanzheng Yue, Yue Hao, Senior Member, IEEE, Jincheng Zhang, Jinyu Ni, Wei Mao, Qian Feng, and Linjie Liu
Abstract—We have developed a novel AlGaN/GaN metal–oxide–
semiconductor high-electron mobility transistor using a stack gate
HfO2 /Al2 O3 structure grown by atomic layer deposition. The
stack gate consists of a thin HfO2 (30-Å) gate dielectric and a
thin Al2 O3 (20-Å) interfacial passivation layer (IPL). For the 50-Å
stack gate, no measurable C–V hysteresis and a smaller threshold
voltage shift were observed, indicating that a high-quality inter-
face can be achieved using a Al2 O3 IPL on an AlGaN substrate.
Good surface passivation effects of the Al2 O3 IPL have also been
confirmed by pulsed gate measurements. Devices with 1-µm gate
lengths exhibit a cutoff frequency (fT ) of 12 GHz and a maximum
frequency of oscillation (fMAX ) of 34 GHz, as well as a maximum
drain current of 800 mA/mm and a peak transconductance of
150 mS/mm, whereas the gate leakage current is at least six
orders of magnitude lower than that of the reference high-electron
mobility transistors at a positive gate bias.
Index Terms—Al2 O3 and HfO2 , atomic layer deposition (ALD),
interfacial passivation layer (IPL), metal–oxide–semiconductor
high-electron mobility transistor (MOS-HEMT), stack gate.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE MAJOR factors that limit the performance and reli-
ability of AlGaN/GaN high-electron mobility transistors
(HEMTs) for high-power radio frequency and high-temperature
applications are their high gate leakage and drain current
collapse. Significant progress has been made on GaN/AlGaN
metal–oxide–semiconductor HEMTs (MOS-HEMTs) using
SiO2 [1], Si3 N4 [2], Ga2 O3 [3], Al2 O3 [4]–[6], and Sc2 O3 [7]
as the gate dielectrics to suppress the aforementioned prob-
lems but at the expense of a significant decrease in device
transconductance [4] and a large threshold voltage shift [5],
[6]. The use of dielectrics with high permittivity (high k) could
help solve these problems, because a larger dielectric constant
could translate to a more efficient gate modulation [8]; thus, a
smaller decrease in transconductance and a moderate increase
in the threshold voltage could be expected in MOS-HEMTs
with high-k gate dielectrics. HfO2 , having a high dielectric
constant (20 ∼ 25) and being highly insulating with a large
Manuscript received January 29, 2008; revised May 13, 2008 and May 15,
2008. This work was supported by the NSFC under Grant 60736033. The
review of this letter was arranged by Editor J. A. del Alamo.
The authors are with the Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education for
Wide Band-Gap Semiconductor Materials and Devices, School of Microelec-
tronics, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China (e-mail: yzhyue@mail.xidian.
edu.cn; yhao@xidian.edu.cn; jchzhang@xidian.edu.cn; jyni@mail.xidian.edu.
cn; wmao@xidian.edu.cn; qfeng@mail.xidian.edu.cn; lljiexidian@163.com).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LED.2008.2000949
0741-3106/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE
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IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS, VOL. 29, NO.
bandgap (5.6 ∼ 5.8 eV), has been studied extensively as the
gate dielectric in Si MOS field-effect transistors [9]. Recently,
HfO2 dielectric films on a GaN surface using reactive sputtering
[8] and atomic layer deposition (ALD) [10] have been reported.
However, a major obstacle is the lack of high-quality and
thermodynamically stable insulators on III–V semiconductors
with a low interface state density and a good interfacial layer
comparable to that of the SiO2 /Si interface.
Recently, we have demonstrated a novel GaN/AlGaN MOS-
HEMT using an ultrathin Al2 O3 dielectric of 3.5 nm grown by
ALD, which has a good passivation effect and a low interface
state [5], [6]. Al2 O3 has better thermal stability (amorphous
up to at least 1000 ◦ C) and chemical stability against AlGaN
than HfO2 [4], [9], which makes Al2 O3 a good candidate for
interfacial passivation layer (IPL) application for high-k gate
MOS-HEMT fabrication. In this paper, we employed a stack
gate HfO2 /Al2 O3 device design, which avoids some problems
between HfO2 and AlGaN, including an interfacial layer [10]
and an interface state [8], to minimize the current collapse and
gate leakage current.
II. D EVICE D ESIGN AND F ABRICATION
The AlGaN/GaN epilayers were grown by metal–organic
chemical vapor deposition and consists of a 40-nm undoped
AlN buffer layer, a 1-µm undoped GaN layer, and a 25-nm
n-Al0.3 Ga0.7 N barrier layer (2 × 1018 cm−3 ) on a 2-in sapphire
substrate. A room temperature Hall mobility of 1150 cm2 /Vs
and a sheet carrier concentration of 1.2 × 1013 cm−2 has
been measured, respectively. Mesa isolation process with BCl3
plasma reactive ion etching was used for device isolation. The
source–drain ohmic contacts were formed by a Ti/Al/Ni/Au
structure. These contacts were annealed at 850 ◦ C for 40 s
using rapid thermal anneal in nitrogen atmosphere. An ohmic
contact resistance of 0.68–0.83 Ωmm was measured using the
transmission-line method. The stack gate HfO2 (3 nm)/Al2 O3
(2 nm) was deposited at 300 ◦ C by ALD using alternating
pulses of HfCl4 , Al(CH3 )3 , and H2 O as the precursors between
the source and drain contacts. The Schottky gate metalliza-
tion consisted of a Ni/Au double layer patterned by e-beam
lithography. Devices with a gate length of 1 µm and a gate
width of 120 µm were prepared. To prepare passivated HEMT
counterparts, the same Al2 O3 (3.5 nm) deposition procedure
was applied after gate metallization on the same material
structure.
 YUE et al.: AlGaN/GaN MOS-HEMT WITH HfO2 DIELECTRIC AND Al2 O3 IPL GROWN BY ALD
Fig. 1. Measured C–V characteristics of the GaN MOS-HEMT and the
HEMT at 1 MHz. The inset shows the I–V characteristics for both a Schottky
diode and a HfO2 /Al2 O3 MOS structure.
III. D EVICE P ERFORMANCE AND D ISCUSSION
The high-frequency (1-MHz) C–V curves for a capacitor
with a stack gate HfO2 (3 nm)/Al2 O3 (2 nm) on AlGaN is
shown in Fig. 1. This capacitor with a diameter of 125 µm
went through all device process. Significantly, no measurable
C–V hysteresis was observed for the HfO2 /Al2 O3 , indicating
fewer bulk traps in the stack dielectric. The extremely low
hysteresis, along with the sharp transition from depletion and
accumulation, demonstrates the high quality of bulk and inter-
face properties of HfO2 /Al2 O3 on AlGaN [4]. At 2-D electron
gas accumulation, the total capacitance could be expressed as
1/Ctot = 1/Cdielectric + 1/CHEMT . From the measured value
of Ctot of 49 pF and CHEMT of 58.4 pF, the capacitance
of HfO2 (3 nm)/Al2 O3 (2 nm), denoted as Cdielectric , was
calculated to be 305 pF. Thus, using ε Al2 O3 = 9, the dielectric
constant of HfO2 was found to be 22.3, which is typical for
HfO2 prepared by ALD. The I–V characteristics of both a
Schottky diode and a MOS structure with the same dimen-
sions are given in the inset in Fig. 1. The leakage current
of the MOS structure is significantly lower than that of the
Schottky diode, by at least six orders of magnitude at a gate
voltage bias of +2 V. Compared with the conventional Al2 O3
MOS-HEMT [5], which had two orders of magnitude lower
gate leakage than the conventional HEMT, the stack gate
MOS structure with the insertion of high-k HfO2 can provide
increased capacitance—storing more charge—for the same
thickness of insulator and translates to a more efficient gate
modulation, or it can provide the same capacitance with a
thicker insulator to further decrease the leakage current. A
smaller decrease in transconductance, a moderate increase in
the threshold voltage, and a further decrease in the leakage
current could be expected in MOS-HEMTs with stack high-k
gate dielectrics.
The IDS –VDS output characteristics of the MOS-HEMT are
shown in Fig. 2(a). As shown, the maximum saturation drain
current IDS at a gate bias of 3 V is 800 mA/mm. A peak
extrinsic transconductance of gm = 150 mS/mm was measured
for the MOS-HEMT, as compared to 165 mS/mm for the
passivated HEMT, shown in Fig. 2(b). The reduction of gm
for the MOS-HEMT follows from a larger separation of the
channel from the Schottky contact. However, due to the high
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839
Fig. 2. (a) Typical output characteristics of an AlGaN/GaN MOS-HEMT with
ALD HfO2 2 (3 nm)/Al2 O3 (2 nm) as the gate dielectric. (b) Dependence of
GM and IDS on VGS in (hollow squares) Al2 O3 passivated HEMT and (solid
circles) stack gate MOS-HEMT.
dielectric constant of HfO2 , the decrease in gM,MAX is only
9%, much better than the transconductance deterioration in
MOS-HEMTs using low-k gate dielectrics [1], [2], [4], [11].
On the other hand, the negative shift in threshold voltage Vth
from about −4 V for HEMT to −5 V for MOS-HEMT is also
due to the increased gate-to-channel distance. The gate voltage
swing (GVS), defined as the 10% drop from the gM,MAX , was
2.4 V for MOS-HEMT and 1.8V for HEMT, shown in Fig. 2(b).
The larger GVS suggests a better linear behavior for the MOS-
HEMT compared with the Schottky gate HEMT, from which
a smaller intermodulation distortion, a smaller phase noise,
and a larger dynamic range could be expected, thus making it
desirable for practical amplifier applications [12].
Gate lag measurements were used to investigate the surface
passivation effectiveness of Al2 O3 IPL on relieving current
collapse. In this method, the drain current (IDS ) response to
a pulsed gate–source voltage (VG ) is measured. Fig. 3 shows
the normalized IDS for both dc and pulsed measurements.
The difference in the dc and pulsed measurements were found
to be negligibly small in both the Al2 O3 passivated HEMT
and the stack gate MOS-HEMT, indicating that no significant
current collapse existed in these devices. Thus, as long as the
device surface was properly passivated, the HfO2 /Al2 O3 gate
insulator did not cause the current collapse. A single layer
of Al2 O3 could also adequately suppress the current collapse,
shown in the inset in Fig. 3; however, the adding of a HfO2
layer was found to be effective to provide a more efficient gate
modulation and a lower leakage current.
From S-parameter measurements, the short-circuit current-
gain cutoff frequency (fT ) and the maximum oscillation
 840
Fig. 3. Gate lag measurements of MOS-HEMT and Al2 O3 passivated HEMT.
VDS is held at 5 V. VG is switched from −7 V to the value shown on the x-axis.
The current has been normalized for both figures. The inset shows the gate lag
measurement of Al2 O3 passivated HEMT.
Fig. 4. Short-circuit current gain H21 and unilateral power gain U versus
frequency of 1.0 × 120 µm AlGaN/GaN MOS-HEMT on a sapphire substrate.
Device is biased at VDS = +10 V and VGS = −3 V.
frequency (fMAX ) are determined by biasing the devices at
VDS = 10 V and VGS = −3 V. Under these conditions, the
1-µm-gate-length device shows fT = 12 GHz and fMAX =
34 GHz. These values are obtained by extrapolating the short-
circuit current gain (H21 ) and the unilateral power gain (U )
curves, respectively, using −20-dB/dec slopes, as shown in
Fig. 4. The cutoff frequency fT can be approximated by fT =
GM /(2πCGS ) [13]. The increased source and drain resistances
due to the imperfect contacts reduce the transconductance and
make the microwave performance of the device not impressive
[14], [15].
IV. C ONCLUSION
We have demonstrated the ALD-grown insulated gate MOS-
HEMT on sapphire substrates, using a stack gate HfO2 /Al2 O3
structure. The 1-µm-gate-length device exhibits a transcon-
ductance of 150 mS/mm, an fT of 12 GHz, and an fMAX
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IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS, VOL. 29, NO. 8, AUGUST 2008
of 34 GHz, with negligible C–V hysteresis and a very low
gate leakage current density. Gate lag measurements indicate
that the Al2 O3 /AlGaN interface is of high quality. These
results provide a new opportunity to make AlGaN/GaN MOS-
HEMTs with high-k dielectrics for gate oxides using ALD-
grown Al2 O3 IPL.
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