Single-Event Burnout in Vertical <i>β</i>-Ga₂O₃ Diodes With Pt/PtO<i>ₓ</i> Schottky Contacts and High-<i>k</i> Field-Plate Dielectrics
S. Islam, A. S. Senarath, Esmat Farzana, Dennis R. Ball, Arijit Sengupta, Nolan S. Hendricks, Arkka Bhattacharyya, Robert A. Reed, En Xia Zhang, James S. Speck, Daniel M. Fleetwood, Ronald D. Schrimpf
Abstract
Single-event burnout (SEB) is experimentally observed in structurally improved vertical Beta-gallium oxide ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\beta $ </tex-math></inline-formula> -Ga2O3) Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) with Pt/PtOx Schottky contacts and high-k field-plate (FP) dielectrics. These SBDs are resistant to alpha particle strikes up to the in-air reverse bias voltage of 475 V, but SEB-induced catastrophic failure is observed during Californium-252 (Cf-252) fission fragment exposure at 400 ± 20 V reverse bias. The SEB threshold in Cf-252 testing is improved in PtOx-contact SBDs with 4- <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> epitaxial layers and high-k FP dielectrics by ~30%, compared to previously reported results for Pt-contact SBDs with 10- <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> epitaxial layers. TCAD simulations show that ion-induced electric fields increase less in devices with FPs than in those without FPs.