Control of Surface Chemistry in Recess Etching Towards Normally‐OFF GaN MIS‐HEMTs

Reducing off‐state and gate leakage current is crucial in the development of metal‐insulator‐semiconductor high‐electron‐mobility‐transistors (MIS‐HEMTs). This work reports interface engineering in the gate recess region through low‐damage digital etching during the fabrication of normally‐off GaN MIS‐HEMTs. Conventional plasma etching leads to a reduction of the N/(Al+Ga) ratio, but this value recovered to almost 1 with optimized oxidation condition during digital etching, suggesting a reduction of the Al/Ga dangling bonds based on the proposed technique. GaN MIS‐HEMTs with digital etching exhibits a threshold voltage of 1.0 V at 1 µA/mm, a high ON/OFF current ratio of 1010, a gate breakdown voltage of 22 V, and a low gate leakage current of 10‐8 mA/mm.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.