Performance Improvement and Current Collapse Suppression of Al2O3/AlGaN/GaN HEMTs Achieved by Fluorinated Graphene Passivation

In this letter, fluorinated graphene (FG) is utilized to passivate GaN surface for a metal-insulator-semiconductor high electron mobility transistor (MIS HEMT). The FG-MIS HEMT achieves better DC characteristics than a traditional MIS HEMT, including larger saturation drain current density (34.3%), higher peak trans-conductance (14.4%), lower ON-resistance (21.6%), and lower off-state leakage. Moreover, current collapse measurement reveals that not only can FG suppress the drain saturation current reduction of MIS HEMT from 41.8% to 8.1% at off-state drain bias of 50 V, but also it prevents dynamic ON-resistance increasing with off-state stress. The coverage of FG on GaN surface can prevent GaN being oxidized and N diffusion from GaN during gate dielectric deposition, thus suppressing the formation of Ga-O bonds and Ga dangling bonds, leading to an excellent interface condition for Al ₂ O ₃ /GaN with reduced fixed interface charges. Therefore, significant passivation effect is achieved.