Mechanism Study of Gate Leakage Current for AlGaN/GaN High Electron Mobility Transistor Structure Under High Reverse Bias by Thin Surface Barrier Model and Technology Computer Aided Design Simulation

Gate leakage current mechanism in GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) has been studied using a two-dimensional thin surface barrier (TSB) model to represent two unintentional donor thin layers that exit under and outside the gate electrode due to the existence of surface defects. The donor thin layer outside the gate affects the reverse gate current at the high gate voltage above the pinch-off voltage. Higher donor concentration of thin layer outside the gate results in larger ratio of lateral to vertical components of the electric field at the gate edge. On the other hand, the electric field at the center of the gate has only the vertical electric field component. As a result, the two-dimensional effects are only important for the reverse gate current above the pinch-off voltage. We have confirmed in this paper that the simulation results provided by our model correlate very well with the experimental reverse gate current characteristics of the device for a very wide range of reverse gate voltage from 0.1 to 90 V. (C) 2013 The Japan Society of Applied Physics