TCAD simulation was performed to investigate the material properties of an AlGaN/GaN structure in Deep Acceptor (DA)-rich and Deep Donor (DD)-rich GaN cases. DD-rich semi-insulating GaN generated a positively charged area thereof to prevent the electron concentration in 2DEG from decreasing, while a DA-rich counterpart caused electron depletion, which was the origin of the current collapse in AlGaN/GaN HFETs. These simulation results were well verified experimentally using three nitride samples including buffer-GaN layers with carbon concentration ([C]) of 5×1017, 5×1018, and 4×1019 cm-3. DD-rich behaviors were observed for the sample with [C]=4×1019 cm-3, and DD energy level EDD=0.6 eV was estimated by the Arrhenius plot of temperature-dependent IDS. This EDD value coincided with the previously estimated EDD. The backgate experiments revealed that these DD-rich semi-insulating GaN suppressed both current collapse and buffer leakage, thus providing characteristics desirable for practical usage.

Current collapse of AlGaN/GaN heterostructure field-effect transistors (HFETs) formed on qualified epitaxial layers on Si substrates was successfully suppressed using graded field-plate (FP) structures. To improve the reproducibility of the FP structure manufacturing process, a simple process for linearly graded SiO2 profile formation was developed. An HFET with a graded FP structure exhibited a significant decrease in an on-resistance increase ratio of 1.16 even after application of a drain bias of 600 V.

This investigation of the temperature and illumination effects on the AlGaN/GaN HFET threshold voltage shows that it shifts about -1 V under incandescent lamp or blue LED illumination, while almost no shift takes place under red LED illumination. The temperature coefficient for the threshold voltage shift is +3.44 mV/deg under the illuminations and +0.28 mV/deg in darkness. The threshold voltage variation can be attributed to a virtual back-gate effect caused by light-generated buffer layer potential variations. The expressions for the potential variation are derived using Shockley-Read-Hall (SRH) statistics and the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution for the carriers and deep traps in the buffer layer. The expressions indicate that large photoresponses will occur when the electron concentration in the buffer layer is extremely small, that is, highly resistive. In semi-insulating substrates, the substrate potential varies so as to keep the trap occupation function constant. The sign and the magnitude of the threshold voltage variation are explained by the shift of the pinning energy calculated from the Fermi-Dirac distribution function.