1 s2.0 S0026271420301244 Main
1 s2.0 S0026271420301244 Main
1 s2.0 S0026271420301244 Main
Microelectronics Reliability
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/microrel
A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Prior work has shown that the OFF-state breakdown voltage, VBR, of AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility tran-
AlGaN/GaN HEMT sistors (HEMTs) can be raised by just extending the drain end of the gate as a field plate (FP) or a high-k
Breakdown voltage passivation over the AlGaN layer. However, the two techniques have not been compared, and the VBR for which
Buffer trap density their effectiveness was demonstrated was ≥120 V. High-k passivation avoids the lithography involved in rea-
Field plate
lizing a FP, and the VBR of practical devices can go down to a few 10's of volts. Hence the present work compares
High-k passivation
Impact ionization
the effectiveness of these techniques by TCAD simulations and establishes the following. At VBR of few 10's of
Volts, the high-k passivation is much less effective than the FP, e.g. for a device with VBR = 28 V, a 0.7 μm long
FP over 0.105 μm thick SiN doubles the VBR to 56 V, whereas even a 0.5 μm thick HfO2 passivation (εr = 20) has
almost no effect on VBR. However, such differences between the two techniques reduce progressively as VBR is
raised. The differences vanish for VBR ≥ 100 V, for which both techniques can improve the VBR by ≥ 2.5 times.
Although focused primarily on breakdown, our work gives quick calculations showing that the high-k passi-
vation has 5 – 10 % higher gate-drain capacitance than the gate-connected FP.
⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: b.prasanna92@gmail.com (B. Prasannanjaneyulu), karmal@ee.iitm.ac.in (S. Karmalkar).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.microrel.2020.113698
Received 16 February 2020; Received in revised form 8 April 2020; Accepted 13 May 2020
Available online 25 May 2020
0026-2714/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
B. Prasannanjaneyulu and S. Karmalkar Microelectronics Reliability 110 (2020) 113698
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B. Prasannanjaneyulu and S. Karmalkar Microelectronics Reliability 110 (2020) 113698
NAT = 9.9 × 1015 cm−3 and located at 0.475 eV below the conduction
energy band, i.e. EC-EAT = 0.475 eV.
We used the FLDMOB mobility model since it captures the velocity
saturation effect at high fields encountered at large VDS in the OFF-
state. The low field electron mobility was set at μn = 700 cm2 V−1 s−1
by matching the simulated ON-state ID-VGS data at low VDS to the cor-
responding measured data around VGS = VT = −3.6 V, as shown in
Fig. 2(a). Matching the complete ON-state ID-VGS requires the use of VGS
dependent mobility as reported in Ref [14]. However, this is not ne-
cessary since our work concerns OFF-state behavior only. The OFF-state
ID-VDS curve at VGS = −4.1 V simulated using the above NAT and μn
matches the measured VBR as shown in Fig. 2(b). The mismatch be-
tween simulated and measured ID-VDS below breakdown is due to the
neglect of IG; measurements show that ID ≈ IG upto VDS = 15 V (see
Fig. 3(a) of [11]). The neglect of IG in simulation is justified since the
present work concerns breakdown, i.e. the ID-VDS segment near
ID = 1 mA/mm; in this segment ID ≫ IG as pointed out already, and so,
simulations and measurements match.
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B. Prasannanjaneyulu and S. Karmalkar Microelectronics Reliability 110 (2020) 113698
the case of the FP structure, the fringing field emanating from the gate
edge as well as the field plate helps spread potential lines crossing the 2-
DEG; moreover, the length and location of the field plate as well as the
εr of the insulator beneath can all be optimized to get the maximum
spread for a specific VDS, whether high or low. In contrast, in the high-k
passivation case, it is only the fringing field from the gate edge that
spreads the potential lines. At low VDS, this field is small and extends
little from the gate edge. Hence, the spread of the potential lines is less,
and the parameters t and εr of the passivation do not have much impact.
At high VDS however, the fringing field is large and extends farther.
Therefore, potential lines spread a lot, and parameters t and εr have a
strong impact on the fringing field and hence the spread. As mentioned
in prior works, e.g. [3,8] the spread of the potential lines saturates for
increase in l, t or εr beyond some critical values of these parameters.
The above discussion concludes the following. Both FP and high-k
passivation improve VBR by spreading the field. However, at low VBR,
high-k passivation cannot spread the field to the same extent as FP. This
difference reduces progressively as VBR is raised. Thus, it is the mag-
nitude and not the mechanism of VBR (SCLC or avalanche) that influ-
ences the effectiveness of the VBR enhancement techniques.
Consequences of the above physics on the effectiveness of high-k pas-
sivation and FP techniques are discussed below.
Fig. 5(a) shows that, for this device, the FP does not improve the VBR brought closer, for t = 0.105 μm, the VBR is seen to improve from 28 V
much for t = 0.15–0.2 μm, because the FP is not effective in spreading at l = 0 to 56 V at l = 0.7 μm. This is due to the increased spreading of
the field when it is far away from the 2-DEG. However, when the FP is the field with increase in l, when t = 0.105 μm. However, Fig. 5(b)
shows that even a 0.5 μm thick HfO2 passivation has almost no effect on
VBR because the field does not spread in spite of increase in t. This is
consistent with the conclusion of the previous section that mere pas-
sivation layer, even if high-k, cannot spread the field at low VDS and
improve a low VBR.
5.2. Devices with near-threshold VBR = 100, 163 V without any enhancing
technique
For the device with VBR = 100 V without FP, Fig. 6(a) gives the VBR
as a function of l for different t, and Fig. 6(b) the VBR as a function of t
for both SiN and HfO2 passivation. As explained above, VBR increases
with l, t and εr. Fig. 6(a) shows that a 0.7 μm long FP on 0.5 μm thick
SiN increases the VBR to 248 V. Fig. 6(b) shows that the same high VBR
can also be achieved simply using a 0.5 μm thick HfO2 passivation.
For the device with VBR = 163 V without FP, Fig. 7(a) shows that a
0.7 μm long FP on 0.5 μm thick SiN increases the VBR to 437 V. Further
increase in FP length does not increase VBR, since the two triangular
lobes of the field distribution (e.g. see Fig. 5(a)) no more overlap and so,
the area under this distribution which represents VBR, saturates as re-
ported in Ref [3]. Fig. 7(b) shows that the same high VBR can be also
achieved simply using a 0.5 μm thick HfO2 passivation layer. It is seen
that, the field spreads with increase in l of the FP or t of the high-k
passivation as explained in Section 4 and reaches the drain contact for
FP l ≥ 0.3 μm or HfO2 t ≥ 0.3 μm.
Fig. 5. Simulated breakdown voltage data at VGS = −4.1 V and 5.3. Comparison of FP and high-k passivation techniques
NAT = 9.9 × 1015 cm−3; (a) as a function of field plate length for different
passivation layer thicknesses, and breakdown field distribution for 0.105 μm Fig. 8 summarizes the simulated enhancement in VBR due to the two
thick SiN passivation, (b) as a function of passivation thickness for different techniques for different values of VBR without the technique obtained
dielectric constants, and breakdown field distribution along 2-DEG for various by varying the NAT. The results due to FP correspond to a FP geometry
HfO2 passivation thicknesses. which is optimized to yield maximum VBR enhancement. It is seen that,
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B. Prasannanjaneyulu and S. Karmalkar Microelectronics Reliability 110 (2020) 113698
Table 1
Field plate and high-k passivation parameters yielding the same VBR. The 200 V
device has NAT = 3.5 × 1016 cm−3, while the 350 V device has NAT
= 1 × 1017 cm−3
VBR (V) High-k passivation Field plate
VBR in the device with the FP but not so in the device with high-k
passivation. On the other hand for a device structure with VBR = 150 V
without any enhancement technique, the FP and high-k passivation can
spread the electric field equally (see Fig. 6). In this case, if LDG = 2 μm
by way of example, the same VBR may be obtained and the breakdown
field may touch the drain, in both techniques. Now, increasing LDG will
increase VBR in both cases, but to the same extent; the VBR will saturate
for some large LDG.
6. Conclusion
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B. Prasannanjaneyulu and S. Karmalkar Microelectronics Reliability 110 (2020) 113698
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