GaN HEMT and MMICs at Chalmers

- Challenges for microwave GaN HEMTs

NIKLAS RORSMAN
2020-01-16
 https://saabgroup.com/media/storie
Chalmers GaN HEMT activities s/stories-listing/2015-3/leading-the-
way-with-gallium-nitride-technology/

• 20 years of GaN HEMT research

• Industrial collaborations
• Saab, Ericsson, UMS AG, SweGaN,….
• Early demonstration of GaN MMICs
• Activities
• Material, device design, processing,
small- and large-signal
characterization, modelling, MMIC-
processing (microstrip)
2020-01-29 Chalmers University of Technology 2
 Microstrip WBG MMIC Process
• All processes performed in-house
• 15 mask layers
• Combination of Laser writer/EBL/Contact lithography
• Chalmers WBG Design-kit (ver 2.11)
• New design-kit available (Compatible with
ADS 2017 and later versions)
• Processed on 3” or 4” epi wafers
• MIM-cap: SiN 200pF/mm2, VBD >150 V
• Resistors: TaN 42Ω/□, TiN 10 Ω/□,
semiconductor resistor (200-300 Ω/□) Low Noise
• Inductors Amplifier

Switch
• Transmission lines
• Via holes
• Examples of demonstrator circuits Power
• Integrated GaN X-band Transceiver Amplifier
• Single pole, double throw (SPDT) switches
• …..
 Current Chalmers goals
• High frequency (>100 GHz), low dispersion HEMTs
and integrated circuits for wireless communication
and sensor systems
• Utilize advances in GaN HEMT technology to
demonstrate power amplification at D-band
5

Growth of GaN HEMT structures

• GaN HEMT epiwafers generally grown by
Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor
Deposition (MOCVD)
• Elements supplied by precursors in carrier gas
• High crystal quality
• High throughput

• An alternative method is Plasma Assisted

Molecular Beam Epitaxy (PA-MBE)
• No carrier gases or precursors, combined with ultra-high
vacuum, result in higher purity
• Decreased need for compensational doping
• p-doping
• Low throughput
• Lower growth temperature
• Allows for growth of In-containing HEMT structures

• PA-MBE is a complementary growth method for exploring the

intrinsic limitations of GaN electronics
CHALLENGES FOR GaN HEMT TECHNOLOGIES
• Electron trapping effects The anatomy of GaN HEMTs

• Surface trapping
Gate
• Passivation
Ω contact
• Buffer trapping
Ω contact SiNx SiNx
Cap-layer
GaN GaN
• Deep level doping BarrierAlGaN
layer AlGaN
• Back-barrier Exclusion layer (AlN)

• High frequency optimization GaN-channel

GaN

• Ohmic contacts AlNor AlGaN)

Buffer (GaN

• Electron transport properties Semi-insulating

Nucleation layer SiC
AlN
Substrate: Semi-insulating SiC

2020-01-29 Chalmers University of Technology 6

 Downscaling for high frequency optimization
𝑔𝑚 𝜈
f𝑇 ≈ = ε
2π𝐶𝑔𝑠 2π𝑙𝑔 Cgs ~ 𝑙
𝑡𝐵 𝑔
𝑓𝑇 qµ𝑛𝑠 (𝑡𝐵 )
f𝑚𝑎𝑥 ≈ g ds ~
𝑙𝑔
2 𝑅𝑖 + 𝑅𝑔 + 𝑅𝑠 𝑔𝑑𝑠 + 2π𝑓𝑇 𝐶𝑔𝑑 𝑅𝑔 ε
gm~ 𝜈
𝑡𝐵

High frequency optimization

• Down-scaling the gate length (Cgs)
• Down-scaling the barrier thickness (gds, gm)
• Improve the electron confinement (gds)
• Improve electron transport properties (gm, fT)
• Decreasing Rs (Rc, µ)
Decreasing Rs: Ohmic contacts
Ω Ω

• Ohmic contacts on (Al)GaN are challenging due to contact

Schottky barrier (AlGaN)
contact

the large bandgap Channel (GaN)

• Large spread in reported values of Rc in the literature. Substrate (SiC)

• Ohmic contacts are formed by creating a heavily

doped region beneath the contact which promotes
tunneling via band-bending
• Ohmic contacts conventionally based on Ti/Al/Ni/Au
• Ti + N = TiN (detected by e.g. TEM or XRD)
• N vacancies equivalent to n-doping
• Annealed at high temperature (>800°C) Literature results
• Purple plague (AuAl alloy) formed
• May affects sheet resistance Simulated Ec of an AlGaN/GaN
structure for increasing surface
doping levels.
Recessed, Ta-based Ohmic contacts
Annealed @ 550 °C
• Ta-based (Ta/Al/Ta) Annealed @ 830 °C

• Low anneal temperature (550C)

• Au free Ti-based contacts Ta-based
• Better edge acuity contacts
• Alignment marks for e-beam often defined in the ohmic-layer
• Critical for downscaling

• More advanced epi-structures with AlN

exclusion layer or high Al content in the
barrier generally requires ohmic recess.
Contact
• Deeply recessed Ta-based ohmic contacts Epitaxial
structure
Etching depth
(nm)
resistance
posses a wide process window (Ω·mm)
tbarrier + 10 0.24
• Versatile process Ⅰ
tbarrier + 25 0.33
• Etch depth
tbarrier + 10 0.21
• Anneal temperature and duration Ⅱ
tbarrier + 20 0.36
• Critical parameters
tbarrier + 10 0.25
• Angle of recess Ⅲ
tbarrier + 15 0.25
• Metal coverage
Impact of ohmic process on vertical currents in
AlGaN/GaN-on-SiC HEMTs 1E-3 1E-3

• Low and high anneal temperature ohmic

1E-4
1E-4
a b
1E-5 1E-5

metal processes for GaN-based transistors 1E-6 1E-6

Current (A)
Current (A)
1E-7 1E-7

have been tested for buffer leakage. 1E-8

HV top
0V top
0V subs
1E-8
HV top
0V top
0V subs
1E-9 1E-9

• Improvements in maximum achievable 1E-10

1E-11
1E-10

voltage for the low temperature process.

1E-11
0 50 100 150 200 250
0 50 100 150 200 250
HV (V) HV voltage (V)

Absolute vertical and lateral leakage for Ta (a) and Ti (b) based
• Higher power will be achievable with such contacts.

a contact compared to the conventional

process.
• Collaboration with Bristol University and
IQE Europe
Down-scaling the gate length
• Gate length scaling required for
+100 GHz applications
• Reliable definition of gate lengths
down to 30 nm
• One EBL-step to create a recess in
SiNx, effectively defining the gate length
• One additional EBL-step to form a T-
(mushroom-) gate
• Two EBL-steps required?
Down-scaling the barrier thickness: Barrier design
• ns ~ barrier thickness tB
– Scaling down the barrier
thickness leads to a loss
of electrons.
• ns ~ 𝑃Ԧ
– Polarization depends on
composition
• AlGaN
• InAlN
InAlN
– For a given thickness tB, a lattice-matched InAlN
barrier will generate more electrons than
an AlGaN barrier.
– More challenging growth
– Compositonal control challenging (InAlGaN)
– Ga can be incorporated
Improving the electron confinement
• Gate downscaling leads to short-channel
effects (increased gds and decreased gm)
• Electron confinement in the channel important for
• High frequency performance
• High breakdown, low leakage
• High Pout,
• High efficiency
• High linearity

• Electron confinement/low buffer leakage

achieved by Δ𝑉𝑝𝑜
DIBL = |Δ𝑉 |
• Doping of GaN buffer with a deep acceptor 𝑑𝑠

• AlGaN back-barrier
 Doping of GaN buffer with a deep acceptor
• High resistive GaN buffer generally
achieved with Fe-doping
– Excellent breakdown, very low leakage
• However....
– Doping complicated due to memory
effects (exponential decay)
– Fe in or near the channel causes
unwanted trapping effects
Transient gain measurements of GaN-based LNAs with Fe-
doped and undoped buffers
• Radar receivers need to be operational immediately after high Pin pulse
• Gain recovery after a pulse (with varying power level) on the input
• Large gain, drain current drop for ~20 ms after the pulse for LNAs with Fe-doped
buffer (commercial LNAs)

• Chalmers process without Fe buffer: no effects on the gain, smaller drain current
drop

UMS Chalmers

Qorvo

O. Axelsson, N. Billström, N. Rorsman, M. Thorsell, ”Impact of Trapping Effects on the Recovery Time of GaN Based Low Noise Amplifiers”, Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, IEEE, vol. 26,
pp. 31-33, 2016
 Trapping in buffers with different buffer doping
Different semiconductor technologies are compared by mimicking power amplifier operation with
modulated signals by pulsing the drain voltage from a quiescent point of 20 V to higher values for
1 μs. The current response after the pulse is monitored.
• Carbon-doping is an interesting alternative to Fe
• Carbon doping method and profile still to be optimized
• Carbon-doping offers well-controlled doping profiles with two alternative methods:
• by tuning the MOCVD growth parameters (temperature, pressure, and precursor flow), to control incorporation of carbon from precursors
• may compromise GaN crystal quality
• or by adding a carbon precursor
• maintains crystal quality

Si LDMOS Cree GaN HEMT

(Fe-doping?)
LiU and Chalmers GaN HEMT
(C-doping)
Optimization of channel layer thickness in InAlN-based HEMTs
with AlGaN back barriers
• Minimizing the short channel effects with
an AlGaN-back-barrier
• Back-barrier improves electron
confinement and decreases short
channel effects

• Effect of deep-level doping in the back-

barrier still needs to be considered
18

Effect of channel thickness tch=150 nm tch=100 nm tch=50 nm

DC: Thicker channel layer causes

short channel effects (SCE) for
very short gate-lengths Lg=50 nm
200 nm
Lg=50 nm
Lg=50 nm
200 nm
200 nm

Pulsed IV: Thinner channel layer

results in larger dispersion
(increased dynamic Ron)

Large-signal (Power sweep @30

GHz): Output power limited by
• SCE for thicker channels
• Knee walk-out for thinner channels

𝑉𝑑𝑠,𝑚𝑎𝑥 − 𝑉𝑑𝑠,𝑘𝑛𝑒𝑒 · 𝐼𝑑𝑠,𝑘𝑛𝑒𝑒 − 𝐼𝑑𝑠,𝑜𝑓𝑓

𝑃𝑜𝑢𝑡 =
8
Impact of C-doping level in the back-barrier 1000
(a) High-C

• Three different C-doping levels in back-barrier

• Back-barrier doping affects HEMT performance

Ids [mA/mm]
High C-doping
500
• DC: Higher C-doping shows smaller short channel effect (VgsQ,VdsQ) V
(0,0) V
• Pulsed IV: Higher C-doping shows larger current collapse (-5,0)
(-5,10)

• Power sweep: Higher C-doping has lower Pout and PAE due (-5,20)
(-5,30) V
0
0 10 20
to trapping effects
1000
(c) Low-C
Chalmers U of Tech: SL3099C High C
Chalmers U of Tech: SL3101E Low C Ga
1E+21 1E+00

Ga,Al CONCENTRATION
1E+21Ga-> 1E+00
Al->
CONCENTRATION (atoms/cc)

Ga,Al CONCENTRATION

CONCENTRATION (atoms/cc)
1E+20 1E-01
1E+20 1E-01 Low C-doping
Al->
1E+19 1E-02
1E+19 1E-02 500

1E+18 1E-03 1E+18 C≈5e17cm-3 1E-03 (VgsQ,VdsQ) V

(0,0) V
C ≈1e17cm-3 (-5,0)
1E+17 1E-04 1E+17 OSi 1E-04 (-5,10)
OSi (-5,20)
1E+16 1E-05 1E+16 1E-05 (-5,30) V
0
0 10 20
1E+15 1E-06 1E+15 1E-06 Vds [V]
0 1000 0 500 1000 1500
DEPTH (nm) DEPTH (nm) 19
“A GaN–SiC hybrid material for high-frequency and power electronics”
(Appl. Phys. Lett. 113, 041605 (2018); doi: 10.1063/1.5042049)
• Collaboration with Linköping
University and SweGaN AB
• The lattice mismatch (3.5%)
between GaN and SiC substrates
can be accommodated without
triggering extended defects over
large areas using a grain-boundary-
free AlN nucleation layer (NL)
• Buffer thickness decreased from ≈2
to 0.2-0.3 µm Cross-sectional TEM images at the GaN/AlN/SiC interface
using (a) a conventional AlN NL and (b) the optimized NL. (d)
• Preliminary measurements indicate High-resolution image at the interface of GaN/optimized
AlN NL. (e) High-resolution image at the interface of
enhanced breakdown voltage in optimized AlN NL/SiC.
GaN HEMTs
 HEMTs on Quanfine-structures
Thick Fe-doped_Lg100
Fe-doped_Lg100
• ’s optimized nucleation 1.4
1.2
Thick
Cree
V Fe-doped
layer allows for a very thin buffer ≈0.2 1.2
1.0
=(-4:0.5:1) [V] IDS max=1.14 A/mm
GS
QuanFINE ®
um (virtually no buffer) 6.5%
1.0 Current collapse= 17.8 %

I [A/mm]
0.8

[A/mm]
• GaN-buffer on SiC normally ≈2 um S0.8 G Knee walkout=
D 2.3 V
0.6 VGS=1 [V]
• Potentially better electron confinement Barrier

DS
0.6

IDS
UID GaN Channel
0.4 (VGSQ,VDSQ) [V]
and lower thermal resistance (0,0)
0.4
0.2 (-5,0)
• Quanfine-structures demonstrate 0.2 (-5,25)
similar performance as Cree’s Fe- 0.0
0.0 0 5 10 15
1.4
20 QuanFINEv1_Lg100
25QuanFINE_Lg100
doped buffer 2μm
0 5 10 15 1.2
Thick Fe-dopedVDS [V] 1.2
V20
GS
25[V] IDS max=1.05 A/mm
=(-4:0.5:1)

• DC: Similar performance in GaN Buffer VDS [V] 1.01.0 90% Thinner 3.9%

[A/mm]
Current collapse= 14.6 %
!!

IDS[A/mm]
• Ids-Vds and gm. 0.8
0.8
S GKnee walkout= 1.8DV
• Short channel effects? 0.6
0.6 V =1 [V]
Barrier GS

IDS
• Pulsed IV: Smaller current slump in 0.4
0.4 (VGSQ,VDSQ) [V]
UID GaN Channel 0.2μm
(0,0)
Quanfine AlN Nucleation Layer 0.2
0.2 AlN Nucleation Layer
(-5,0)
• Power sweep: To be measured SiC 0.0
0.00 55
SiC
10 15
(-5,25)
20 25
0 10 15 20 25
V [V]
VDS [V]
DS
 Improve electron transport properties: Performance Enhancement of
Microwave GaN HEMTs Using an Optimized AlGaN/GaN Interface
TEM of the AlGaN/GaN interface

• Very high mobility achieved with optimized AlGaN/GaN

interface (>2200cm2/Vs) (comparable with the best
AlGaN/AlN/GaN structures) Poisson-Schrödinger calculation

2DEG

• The sharp interface also results in equally high mobility 2DEG

due to less electron penetration into the barrier
Interface scattering dominant
J. Bergsten, J.-T. Chen, S. Gustafsson, A. Malmros, U. Forsberg, M. Thorsell, E. Janzén, N. Rorsman, ”Performance Enhancement of Microwave GaN HEMTs Without an AlN-Exclusion
Layer Using an Optimized AlGaN/GaN Interface Growth Process”, Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 63, pp. 333-338, 2016. doi: 10.1109/TED.2015.2501838.
Enhanced Mobility in InAlN/AlN/GaN HEMTs Using a GaN
Interlayer
• HEMTs with InAl(Ga)N-barrier is an interesting
alternative for downscaling
Hall characterization
• High electron density for thin barriers

• InAl(Ga)N/GaN HEMTs
• Very low µ (~500 cm2/Vs)
• InAl(Ga)N/AlN/GaN HEMTs
• µ ~ 1600 cm2/Vs
• InAl(Ga)N/GaN/AlN/GaN HEMTs
• µ ~ 1900 cm2/Vs
• ’Standard’ AlGaN/AlN/GaN HEMTs
• µ ~ 2000 cm2/Vs
• Mobility vs. temperature indicate elimination of a
scattering mechanism
• Compositional variations in the InAlN causes local
variations in ns and subband energies
intra-subband scattering
• Large increase in fmax at cryogenic temperatures
SUMMARY
GaN HEMT is an exciting technology for higher frequency
applications such as
• High power, high efficiency amplifiers
• Robust LNAs and switches
Due to its high bandgap and complicated material physics
(polarization, growth methods), there is still much research for
optimum high frequency and low dispersion performance

2020-01-29 Chalmers University of Technology 24