Study of Normally-Off AlGaN/GaN HEMT with Microfield Plate for Improvement of Breakdown Voltage

In this paper, we introduce a new type of AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) with microfield plate (FP). We use Silvaco-ATLAS two-dimensional numerical simulation to calculate the performance of conventional HEMT and HEMT with micro-FP and analyze its principle. By studying a new charge balance method provided by HEMTs and micro-FPs, the physical mechanism of FP adjusting the HEMT potential distribution and channel electric field distribution is analyzed. The new FP structure consists of a drain field plate (D-FP), a source field plate (S-FP) and several micro-gate field plates (G-FP) to improve the output characteristics of HEMTs. By adjusting the distribution of potential and channel electric field, a wider and more uniform channel electric field can be obtained, and the breakdown voltage can be increased to 1278 V. Although the on-resistance of the HEMT is slightly increased to 5.24 Ω mm, it is still lower than other reference values. These results may open up a new and effective method for manufacturing high-power devices for power electronics applications.