Effect of heavy ion radiation on low frequency noise characteristics of AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors

AlGaN/GaN high election mobility transistor (HEMT) has important application prospects in satellite communication, radar, nuclear reactors and other extreme environments, owing to its excellent electrical performance and strong radiation resistance. Heavy ion radiation mainly causes single-event effect and displacement damage effect in AlGaN/GaN HEMT device. In this work, the displacement damage defects introduced by heavy ion radiation are analyzed in detail. With the increase of heavy ion radiation influence, more defects are introduced by displacement damage. These defects reduce the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) concentration through carrier capture and removal effect, and reduce the carrier mobility through scattering mechanism, resulting in gradual degradation of the electrical characteristics of the device. In this work, AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors are irradiated by ¹⁸¹Ta³²⁺ ions with fluences of 1×10⁸ ions/cm², 1×10⁹ ions/cm² and 1×10¹⁰ ions/cm². The electrical characteristics, EMMI and low-frequency noise characteristics of the device before and after heavy ion radiation are measured. The results show that heavy ion radiation can lead to the degradation of electrical parameters. When the heavy ion radiation dose reaches 1×10¹⁰ ions/cm², the electrical characteristics of the device deteriorate seriously, the threshold voltage shifts forward by 25%, and the drain saturation current deteriorates obviously. The defect locations introduced by irradiation are analyzed by EMMI test, and it is found that the number of “hot spots” increases significantly after the having been irradiated by heavy ions with a fluence of 1×10¹⁰ ions/cm², indicating that the radiation leads to the increase of defect density and serious damage to the device. Through the noise test, it is found that with the increase of the radiation fluence, the current noise power spectral density gradually increases. When the fluence reaches 1×10¹⁰ ions/cm², the defect density increases to 3.19×10¹⁸ cm^–3·eV^–1, and the Hooge parameter increases after having been irradiated by heavy ions. We believe that the radiation leads to the defect density and parasitic series resistance of AlGaN/GaN HEMT device to increases, resulting in larger Hooge parameters. Through analyzing the variation of the normalized power spectral density of the drain current noise with bias voltage, it is found that the defects caused by heavy ion radiation will cause the parasitic series resistance to increase.