Ohmic contact morphology improvement with reduced resistance using Si/Au/Ti/Al/Ni/Au (AlGaN) and Si/Au/Ti/Al/Ni/Au (InAlN) stack layers in III-Nitride HEMTs

Abstract This article reports a Ti/Al-based ohmic contact utilizing a thin interfacial Au layer for improved morphology, edge acuity and low contact resistance for applications to III-Nitride high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs). Conventional Ti/Al contacts are based on a metal stack of the form Ti/Al/X/Au, where X is any suitable barrier layer such as Ni. The formation of ohmic contact in GaN and its alloy systems is governed by the formation of TiN during annealing; Au inter-diffusion during annealing also assists the formation of TiN islands and aids in reducing the contact resistance. Furthermore, inter-metallic phase formation between Ti and Al lowers the contact resistance. It is observed that the contact surface morphology strongly depends on the top Au layer thickness. Insertion of a very thin Au layer (2–3 nm) has drastically improved the surface quality with the achievement of contact resistance as low as 0.36 Ω mm and a specific contact resistance of 2.4 × 10 −6 Ω cm 2 on AlGaN/GaN HEMT. The reduction in contact resistance is due to the formation of more conducting intermetallic phases during annealing, which is assisted due to the thin Au layer insertion. Further reduction in the contact resistance to 0.13 Ω mm was also achieved with the introduction of Si as a dopant layer in the reported metal scheme. The measured rms surface roughness was reduced to ∼8 nm from 0.12 µ m in comparison to the conventional ohmic contact.