We investigated the effects of chemical treatments for removing native oxide layers on InAlN surfaces by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The untreated surface of the air exposed InAlN layer was covered with the native oxide layer mainly composed of hydroxides. Hydrochloric acid treatment and ammonium hydroxide treatment were not efficient for removing the native oxide layer even after immersion for 15 min, while hydrofluoric acid (HF) treatment led to a removal in a short treatment time of 1 min. After the HF treatment, the surface was prevented from reoxidation in air for 1 h. We also found that the 5-min buffered HF treatment had almost the same effect as the 1-min HF treatment. Finally, an attempt was made to apply the HF-based treatment to the metal-InAlN contact to confirm the XPS results.

We investigated the influence of the thickness of the AlN interlayer for InAlN/GaN and InAlN/AlGaN/GaN heterostructures. The AlN thickness strongly affects the surface morphology and electron mobility of the InAlN/GaN structures. The rms roughness of the surface increases from 0.35 to 1.2 nm with increasing AlN thickness from 0 to 1.5 nm. Large pits are generated when the AlN is thicker than 1 nm. The highest electron mobility of 1470 cm2/VS is obtained for a 0.75-nm-thick AlN interlayer. The mobility, however, becomes lower with increasing deviation from 0.75 nm. It is only 200 cm2/VS for the 0-nm thick AlN. Inserting AlGaN between AlN and InAlN suppresses the influence of the AlN interlayer thickness. A smooth surface with rms roughness of 0.35 nm is obtained for all samples with 0-1.5-nm-thick AlN. The electron mobility ranges from 1000 to 1690 cm2/VS. The variation is smaller than that for InAlN/GaN. We fabricated field effect transistors (FETs) with gate length of 2 µm. The electron mobility in the access region affects the transconductance (gm) of FETs. As a results, the influence of the AlN thickness for InAlN/GaN FETs is larger than that for InAlN/AlGaN/GaN FETs, which reduces gate leakage current. The transconductance varies from 93 to 235 mS/mm for InAlN/GaN FETs. In contrast, it varies from 180 to 230 mS/mm for InAlN/AlGaN/GaN FETs. These results indicate that the InAlN/AlGaN/GaN heterostructures could lead to the development of GaN-based FETs.