Temperature Dependent I-V Characteristics of AlGaN/GaN HBTs and GaN BJTs

Huili G. Xing*, Umesh K. Mishra Electrical and Computer Engineering Department University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106 Abstract: DC I-V characteristics of AlGaN/GaN heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) and GaN homojunction bipolar transistors (BJTs) are analyzed in the temperature range of 200-450 K. At low current levels, the adverse effects of poor ohmic contacts coupled with paths of high leakage make it difficult to extract intrinsic device operation [Explanation of anomalous current gain observed in GaN based bipolar transistors, Xing et al. IEEE Elect. Dev. Lett. 24(1) 2003:p.4-6]. At intermediate current levels, owing to enhanced ionization of Mg in the base, the HBTs show an increase in current gain resulting from mitigated current crowding, and the BJTs show a decrease in current gain resulting from reduction of emitter injection coefficient. The offset voltage dependence on temperature is also explained. 1. Introduction Both experimental and theoretical work has been published on the operation of GaN-based bipolar transistors in the past decade. Some groups have reported an increased current gain of AlGaN/GaN heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) at higher temperatures due to enhanced ionization of deep Mg accepters in the base [1], while others have reported an increase in at lower temperatures [2]. In this paper, we show that this discrepancy can be largely attributed to the different operating current levels of the devices. DC characteristics of both GaN BJTs and AlGaN/GaN graded HBTs are presented in the temperature range of 200 450 K, in order to have a better understanding of the device operation mechanisms. 2. Experiments The transistors were grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) on cplane sapphire substrates, and fabricated using the technique of selective emitter regrowth. The details of growth and device fabrication can be found elsewhere [3, 4].

(a)

(b)

Fig.1 Device layer structures of (a) GaN BJT and (b) AlGaN/GaN HBT The device structures are shown in Fig. 1: both the GaN BJTs and AlGaN/GaN HBTs employed a 100 nm thick Mg-doped GaN base and the HBTs incorporated a graded AlGaN emitter structure. The completed devices have an emitter size of 20 m x 50 m.
* hxing@nd.edu, now with Electrical Engineering Department, University of Notre Dame, IN 46656

3. Results and discussions Both common emitter and Gummel Plot I-Vs were measured at varying temperatures. For GaN-based bipolar transistors, it is generally difficult to form ohmic contacts to the p-type base [5]. Sometimes the Schottky-like contacts exhibit a burn-in phenomenon in that their I-V characteristics improve during device testing. In order to minimize such effects, the devices were tested for several temperature cycles between 200 K and 450K and their characteristics were found to be reproducible. At 300 K, the BJTs show a current gain of ~ 5 and the HBTs show of ~ 20 at 10 mA, which corresponds to an average output current density ~ 1 kAcm-2.

(a) (b) (c) Fig.2 Common emitter characteristics of GaN BJTs in the temperature range of 200-400 K for I B = 0.5mA : (a) 200 K, (b) 300 K, and (c) 400 K.

(a) (b) (c) Fig.3 Common emitter characteristics of AlGaN/GaN HBTs in the temperature range of 200-400 K for I B = 0.1mA : (a) 200 K, (b) 300 K, and (c) 400 K. Figures 2 & 3 show the common emitter family curves of the BJTs and HBTs at several temperatures, respectively. First, it is obvious that the maximum output current IC drops with the increasing temperature for both type of devices at a given set of base currents IB, indicating a current gain drop. However, it is also noticed that it drops in very different fashions for the BJTs and HBTs. For the BJTs, IC, thus the current gain, drops for almost the entire base current levels (IB = 0.5 5 mA). While for HBTs, IC remains almost constant up to 10 mA with IB = 0.1 - 0.5 mA for all the temperatures, indicating a constant current gain; for a higher IC, a pronounced current gain drop is observed. This difference can be explained by the classical behavior of the homojunction and heterojunction bipolar transistors along with the nature of Mg in GaN as a deep acceptor. The emitter injection coefficient increases with increasing ratio of the electron current component I nE and the hole current component I pE of the emitter current:

I nE I pE

nE pB exp(Eg kT ) . Here, nE is the electron concentration in the emitter, p B the hole

concentration in the base, and Eg the bandgap barrier seen by the holes back injecting from the base. Using an activation energy of 160 meV and a Mg concentration of 2 x 1019 cm-3, it is calculated that the hole concentration increases from ~ 1016 cm-3 at 200 K to ~ 1018 cm-3 at 450 K. For BJTs, this will cause a large change (two orders of magnitude) in I nE I pE with respect to temperature since Eg = 0 . Therefore, a large drop in current gain is expected at elevated temperatures. For HBTs with a graded Al0.05Ga0.95N emitter, Eg = 140meV , i.e. The exponential term clearly dominates the

Eg kT = 3.6 8.1 for T = 200 450 K .

ratio I nE I pE , thus, the current gain is expected to remain constant in this temperature range. Another pronounced feature in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 is the increase of the offset voltage Voffset with decreasing temperature. For a bipolar transistor with many external elements including nonideal ohmic contacts and highly resistive base (i.e. high base access resistance), Voffset consists of three major components [6]: Voffset VB , cont + (1 offset ) I B RB , access + I B RE , where VB , cont : lateral voltage drop under the base contacts on the emitter side owing to the base current crowding around this edge of the base contacts, offset : common base current gain of the intrinsic transistors at Voffset ,

RB , access : base access resistance owing to the finite distance between the base contacts and the
intrinsic transistor, I B RE : voltage drop across the parasitic emitter resistance including the non-ohmic behavior of the emitter contacts. At low temperatures, RB , access increases because of the decrease of hole concentration, RE also increases since those devices employed non-alloyed emitter contacts. It is also worth noting that Voffset depends on the current gain and I B . Therefore, at similar I C , the BJT show a higher Voffset than the HBT. Owing to this extraordinarily high Voffset and I B for the BJT, its base-collector diode is under severe forward bias when VCE < Voffset and I B > 1mA . This causes the measured collector current to be negative. To illustrate the current gain dependence on temperature at different current levels, Fig. 4 plots determined from Gummel plots versus I C for both devices at the temperature range of 200 - 450 K. For the BJT, in the low current region (< 10 A/cm2), the apparent increases dramatically with decreasing I C or decreasing temperature. For example, at I C = 10-4 A, the apparent increases from 1 at 450 K to 100 at 200 K (out of scale). However, the measurements at low currents do not describe the intrinsic device operation since the apparent high results from the high leakage currents coupled with poor base contacts, and the detailed explanation can be found in Reference 7. In the intermediate current region, shows an increase with increasing I C , a classic behavior owing to the recombination current in the emitter-base junction. As explained above, the decrease of with increasing temperature is mainly attributed to the increase of hole concentration in the base. In the high current region, the trend of vs. temperature is further complicated by competing mechanisms including self-heating and emitter crowding induced Kirk effect [6].

Fig.4 Current gain vs. collector current in the temperature range of 200 450 K for (left) GaN BJTs and (right) Al0.05Ga0.95N HBTs, with an emitter size of 20 x 50 m2. Similarly for the HBT, only the intermediate current region describes the intrinsic device operation. In the I C range of 10-4-10-3 A, increases with increasing temperature. This is consistent with the simulation result [1], which was attributed to the spreading of 2 dimensional base current at higher temperature owing to the higher degree of Mg activation. At higher currents (~ 10-3 A) where the base-emitter recombination current is negligible, the device gain shows little change with temperature, as expected for HBTs. 4. Conclusions Temperature dependent I-Vs of AlGaN/GaN HBTs and GaN BJTs are analyzed. At intermediate current levels, owing to enhanced ionization of Mg in the base, HBTs show an increase in resulting from mitigated current crowding and BJTs show a decrease resulting from deduction of emitter injection coefficient. The sources of offset voltage are also presented. This work was supported by the DoD Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program administrated by the office of Naval Research under Dr. Harry Dietrich. References: [1] Monier C., S. J. Pearton, P.C. Chang, A.G. Baca and F. Ren, Appl. Phys. Lett., 76(21): P. 3115-7, 2000 [2] Huang J.J., M. Hattendorf, M. Feng, D.J.H. Lambert, B.S. Shelton, M.M. Wong, U. Chowdhury, T.G. Zhu, H.K. Kwon and R. Dupuis, IEEE Elect. Dev. Lett., 22(4): P. 157-9, 2001 [3] Xing, H., L. McCarthy, S. Keller, S. P. DenBaars and U. K. Mishra, proceeding of Int. Symp. on Compound Semiconductor, Monterey, CA, USA, October 2000 [4] Xing, H., P. Chavarkar, S. Keller, S. P. DenBaars and U. K. Mishra , IEEE Elect. Dev. Lett. 24(1): P.4-6, 2003 [5] Xing, H., D. S. Green, L. McCarthy, I. P. Smorchkova, P. Chavarkar, T. Mates, S. Keller, S. P. DenBaars, J. Speck and U. K. Mishra, proceeding of BIPOLAR/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting, Minneapolis, MN, USA, September 2001. [6] Xing, H. and U. K. Mishra, Int. Conf. on Nitride Semiconductors, Nara, Japan, 2003. [7] Xing, H., D. Jena, M. J. Rodwell and U. K. Mishra, IEEE Elect. Dev. Lett. 24(1) 2003: p.4-6