Characterization of Leakage and Reliability of SiNx Gate Dielectric by Low-Pressure Chemical Vapor Deposition for GaN-based MIS-HEMTs

• Published in: IEEE transactions on electron devices Vol. 62; no. 10; pp. 3215 - 3222
• Main Authors: Mengyuan Hua, Cheng Liu, Shu Yang, Shenghou Liu, Kai Fu, Zhihua Dong, Yong Cai, Baoshun Zhang, Chen, Kevin J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.10.2015
• Subjects: Aluminum gallium nitride; Dielectrics; Electric breakdown; Gallium nitride; gate dielectric; Leakage currents; Logic gates; low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD); silicon nitride; Wide band gap semiconductors; silicon nitride; Gallium nitride; low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD); gate dielectric
• ISSN: 0018-9383; 1557-9646
• DOI: 10.1109/TED.2015.2469716

In this paper, we systematically investigated the leakage and breakdown mechanisms of the low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) silicon nitride thin film deposited on AlGaN/GaN heterostructures. The LPCVD-SiN x gate dielectric exhibits low leakage and high breakdown electric field. The dominant mechanism of the leakage current through LPCVD-SiN x gate dielectric is identified to be Poole-Frenkel emission at low electric field and Fowler-Nordheim tunneling at high electric field. Both electric-field-accelerated and temperature-accelerated time-dependent dielectric breakdown of the LPCVD-SiN x gate dielectric were also investigated.