AlGaN/GaN heterostructures for high power and high-speed applications

Abstract

Abstract AlGaN/GaN heterostructures are one of the most promising semiconducting structures for fabricating high-speed and high-power electronic devices such as high electron mobility transistors and heterojunction bipolar transistors. Due to the lack of native substrates, these epitaxial structures are generally grown on foreign substrate materials such as sapphire, SiC and Si by using two-step growth techniques. In this paper, a few test structures along with TLM pads, FET structure, ohmic contacts and Schottky contacts have been fabricated on AlGaN/GaN heterostructure by photolithography, reactive ion etching, and e-beam metallization. Transmission line measurement has been used to calculate the sheet resistivity and contact resistance of ohmic pads. Current voltage measurement is used to test an FET structure of size 1 × 150 µm2 with a gate length of 4 µm and source to drain spacing of 5 µm.