p-GaN Gate HEMTs With 10.6 V Maximum Gate Drive Voltages by Mg Doping Engineering

We present a novel p-gallium nitride (GaN) gate HEMT structure with reduced hole concentration near the Schottky interface by doping engineering in metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD), which aims at lowering the electric field across the gate. By employing the additional unintentionally doped GaN (u-GaN) layer, the gate leakage current is suppressed and the gate breakdown voltage is boosted from 10.6 to 14.6 V with negligible influence on the threshold voltage and on-resistance. A reduced Mg concentration in the u-GaN layer was confirmed by secondary-ion mass spectrometry. Time-dependent gate breakdown measurements reveal that the maximum gate drive voltage increases from 6.2 to 10.6 V for a ten-year lifetime with a 1% gate failure rate, which effectively expands the operating voltage margin of the p-GaN gate HEMTs without any other additional process step.