High Power Linearity and Low Leakage Current of AlN/GaN/InGaN Coupling Channel HEMTs With N₂O Oxidation Treatment
Hao Lu, Longge Deng, Ling Yang, Bin Hou, Likun Zhou, Meng Zhang, Long Chen, Mei Wu, Qian Yu, Kai Cheng, Xiaohua Ma, Yue Hao
Abstract
This letter reports on a high-linearity and low-leakage current AlN/GaN/InGaN coupling-channel HEMT (CC-HEMT) utilizing the N <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> O oxidation treatment process. Attributed to the channel coupling effect and the gate oxidation process, there is a significant improvement in both the leakage current and linearity figure of merit. The fabricated HEMT exhibited a low off-state leakage of 1.6 nA/mm, which achieves a high on/off current ratio of 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">9</sup> for AlN-based transistors. The extrinsic <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">f</i> <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">T</sub> and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">f</i> <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">max</sub> of the proposed CC-HEMT are 53 and 118 GHz, respectively. The two-tone power level linearity of the proposed CC-HEMT was characterized. The Ka-band output third-order intermodulation point (OIP3) and linearity figure of merit (LFoM) of OIP3/ <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">P</i> <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">DC</sub> are 36.4 dBm and 12.9 dB, respectively. These results highlight the application prospects of the AlN/GaN/InGaN CC-HEMT system for high-linearity and low-power consumption power amplifiers.