GaSb/InAs hot electron transistors (HETs) composed of a type-II misaligned quantum well operate at room temperature. The collector current is well described by the thermionic emission from the emitter. In order to get insight of the electron transport in the HET, the base width was varied or the collector barrier was modulated. The emitter's barrier height for the thermionic emission decreases with decreasing base width. This is caused by the increase of the quantum confinement energy in the InAs base with decreasing base width. Among HETs with a GaSb collector, a GaInSb abrupt layer, or a GaInSb graded layer at the collector edge, the latter type has the largest collector current. This indicates that collector grading reduces not only the collector barrier height, but also the quantum mechanical reflection of electrons. Collector-graded HETs with a 5 nm-thick base show a current gain of 8. The sheet resistance of InAs base is one order of magnitude less than bulk InAs without doping. This reduction is partly due to the accumulation of electrons transferred from the GaSb valence band to the InAs conduction band.

We have fabricated AlGaN/GaN HEMTs with a thin InGaN cap layer to implement normally-off HEMTs with a small extrinsic source resistance. The key idea is to employ the polarization-induced field in the InGaN cap layer, by which the conduction band is raised leading to the normally-off operation. Fabricated HEMT with an In0.2Ga0.8N cap layer with a thickness of 5 nm showed normally-off operation with a threshold voltage of 0.4 V and a maximum transconductance of 85 mS/mm for the device with a 1.9-µm-long gate. By etching-off the In0.2Ga0.8N cap layer at the region except under the gate using gate and ohmic electrodes as etching masks, the sheet resistance has decreased from 2.7 to 0.75 kΩ/, and the maximum transconductance has increased from 85 to 130 mS/mm due to a reduction of the extrinsic source resistance. The transconductance was increased from 130 to 145 mS/mm by annealing the devices at 250 for 20 minutes in a N2 atmosphere.