IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS, VOL. 22, NO.

10, OCTOBER 2001

457

AlGaN/AlN/GaN High-Power Microwave HEMT

L. Shen, S. Heikman, B. Moran, R. Coffie, N.-Q. Zhang, D. Buttari, I. P. Smorchkova, S. Keller, S. P. DenBaars,
and U. K. Mishra

AbstractIn this letter, a novel heterojunction AlGaN/AlN/GaN

high- electron mobility transistor (HEMT) is discussed. Contrary
to normal HEMTs, the insertion of the very thin AlN interfacial
nm) maintains high mobility at high sheet charge denlayer (
and decreasing alloy scatsities by increasing the effective
tering. Devices based on this structure exhibited good DC and RF
performance. A high peak current 1 A/mm at GS
V was
obtained and an output power density of 8.4 W/mm with a power
added efficiency of 28% at 8 GHz was achieved.

=2

Index TermsGaN, heterojunctions, microwave power FETs,

MODFETs.

Fig. 1. Schematic cross section of an AlGaN/AlN/GaN HEMT.

I. INTRODUCTION

II. DEVICE STRUCTURE

S a promising candidate for future microwave power

devices, GaN-based high-electron mobility transistors
(HEMTs) have attracted much research interest. A combination
of the wide bandgap (3.4 eV of GaN to 6.2 eV of AlN) which
V/cm), strong
leads to high breakdown fields (
polarization fields which are capable of producing sheet charge
cm , and high peak
densities, , in excess of
cm/s) and saturation velocity (
cm/s) of
(
electrons promises high microwave power. Therefore, output
power density has become a very important figure of merit for
AlGaN/GaN HEMTs. Extensive research has been performed
to improve the output power density from 1.1 W/mm in 1996
[1] to the state-of-the-art value of 9.8 W/mm in 2001 [2]. In
and electron
order to get high power density, the product of
, should be maximized. Increasing the Al mole
mobility,
fraction in the AlGaN cap layer will lead to higher , but
will drop due to alloy disorder scattering and the crystal quality
may degrade as well (e.g., density of impurities is higher [3]).
product improvement is limited. In this
Therefore, the
letter, we present device results using a novel AlGaN/AlN/GaN
nm) layer
heterostructure [4]. The insertion of the thin AlN (
simultaneously improves the sheet charge density and mobility
compared with the conventional AlGaN/GaN heterostructure
having equivalent AlGaN parameters.

Fig. 1 shows the schematic cross section of the

AlGaN/AlN/GaN structure. The samples studied in this
letter were grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition
(MOCVD) on semi-insulating SiC substrates. The new structure consists of an 120-nm AlN nucleation layer, a 1.25 m
semi-insulating GaN layer, a 1-nm AlN interfacial layer and
a 25-nm Al Ga N cap layer. The band diagrams for the
new AlGaN/AlN/GaN structure and the standard AlGaN/GaN
structure simulated by 1D poisson simulator [5] are shown in
Fig. 2. The piezoelectric parameters used in the simulation were
taken from [6]. Fig. 2(b) shows that the insertion of the thin AlN
, defined as conduction
layer produces a larger effective
band offset between AlGaN and GaN at both sides of AlN. The
is due to the polarization-induced
increase in effective
dipole in the AlN layer. The primary advantage of the 1-nm
AlN layer is the decrease in alloy disorder scattering leading to
an increase in mobility. This is because the electron penetration
and also the
into the AlGaN is reduced due to the higher
binary AlN at the interface has no alloy disorder scattering.
As reported in [7], the decrease in alloy disorder scattering
improves low temperature two-dimensional electron gases
(2DEG) mobility. Additionally, considering the large 2DEG
densities attainable in this materials system, alloy disorder
scattering can play a significant role in room temperature
results in a
mobility values [8]. Meanwhile, the larger
small increase in 2DEG concentration.
A series of HEMT samples were grown: a) conventional structure: 25-nm Al Ga N GaN; b) novel structure with unintentionally-doped (UID) cap AlGaN: UID
25-nm Al Ga N/1 nm AlN/GaN; c) novel structure with
Si-doped cap AlGaN: 20-nm Si-doped Al Ga N/5 nm UID
Al Ga N/1 nm AlN/GaN. Doping density is approximately
cm . The sample with Si-doped AlGaN cap layer
showed the best performance. Both the sheet charge density
cm
and room temperature mobility 1542
cm /V-s are large improvements over the standard AlGaN/GaN
structure. The sample with undoped AlGaN cap layer also

Manuscript received June 25, 2001; revised July 26, 2001. The work was
supported by the Office of Naval Research through the IMPACT MURI program
(contact monitor: Dr. J. Zolper) and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research
(contact monitor: Dr. G. Witt). The review of this letter was arranged by Editor
D. Ueda.
L. Shen, S. Heikman, R. Coffie, N.-Q. Zhang, D. Buttari, I. P. Smorchkova,
S. Keller, and U. K. Mishra are with the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106 USA (e-mail:
lkshen@engineering.ucsb.edu).
B. Moran and S. P. DenBaars are with the Materials Department, University
of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106 USA.
Publisher Item Identifier S 0741-3106(01)08860-7.

07413106/01$10.00 2001 IEEE

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IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS, VOL. 22, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2001

Fig. 3. IV characteristics of an AlGaN/AlN/GaN HEMT. Device dimension:

:
m . V starts from 2 V, step V.

0 7 2 75

01

Fig. 4. Power performance of an 150-m-wide AlGaN/AlN/GaN HEMT,

showing an output power density 8.4 W/mm with PAE 28% at 8 GHz.

Fig. 2. Schematic conduction band diagram of: (a) conventional AlGaN/AlN

HEMT, (b) novel AlGaN/AlN/GaN HEMT. Dipole in AlN increases the
effective E .

showed high mobility 1520 cm /V-s and slightly higher sheet

cm , compared with 1200
charge density of
cm of conventional sample. Low
cm /V-s and
temperature (77 K) hall measurement showed that the charge
at low temperature was very close to that at room temperature.
This means that most of the charges are the 2DEG. The detailed
study of the AlGaN/AlN/GaN heterojunction will be published
separately in [4]; the role of the silicon dopant is still under
investigation.
III. DEVICE PERFORMANCE
Devices were fabricated on a sample C. Ti/Al/Ni/Au (20
nm/220 nm/55 nm/45 nm) ohmic contacts were evaporated and
annealed at 870 C for 30 s. Mesa isolation was accomplished
with Cl reactive ion beam etching. Ni/Au (30 nm/300 nm)
was evaporated for gate metallization. The final processing step

was a 100-nm Si N passivation layer, which has been shown

to eliminate DC to RF dispersion [9], [10].
Typical DC output current-voltage characteristics of a
m and
0.15-mm-wide HEMT with gate length
m are shown in Fig. 3. The
gate-drain spacing
, at
V is 1
maximum saturation current,
V. The peak value of
A/mm and pinchoff voltage is
, is approximately 200 mS/mm
extrinsic transconductance,
V. The Schottky gate turn-on voltage is
near
approximately 1.5 V and gate-drain breakdown voltage is
typically 70~80 V. The ohmic contact resistance range was

-mm.
Small-signal RF measurements yielded current-gain and
, respectively)
power-gain cutoff frequencies ( and
of 28 GHz and 56 GHz for 0.7- m gate-length device at
V and
V.
An ATN load-pull system was used for the large signal continuous-wave (CW) measurements at 8 GHz. Fig. 4 shows the
uncooled on-wafer measurement results. The device was biased
V and
mA/mm and
in class-AB mode at
tuned for maximum power. Output power density of 8.4 W/mm
was obtained. The associated power gain and PAE are about 7.5

SHEN et al.: AlGaN/AlN/GaN HIGH-POWER MICROWAVE HEMT

dB and 28%, respectively. No stability problem was observed,

compared with the conventional AlGaN/GaN HEMT.

IV. CONCLUSION
In conclusion, a novel heterojunction AlGaN/AlN/GaN was
used to make a HEMT. The insertion of the 1-nm AlN interfa, accial layer generates a dipole to increase the effective
companied by a small increase in 2DEG density. The structure
also decreases the alloy disorder scattering, thus improving the
electron mobility. The device based on this structure exhibited
good DC and RF performance. The high peak current 1 A/mm at
V was obtained and high-power density of 8.4 W/mm
with a PAE 28% at 8 GHz was achieved.

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