Influence of device dimension and gate recess on the characteristics of AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors

In this article, a gate recessed AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) was developed using 4‐in. compound semiconductor process. We designed and fabricated four types of AlGaN/GaN HEMT to characterize the performance of devices. The effects of the gate recess depth and the device dimension of AlGaN/GaN HEMT are demonstrated. We present the scaling effect of the source‐gate and the drain‐gate enhancing the drain current and the transconductance. In addition, the current collapse was measured to estimate the trap effect in the surface and the buffer layer. Moreover, the comparison of RF performance of HEMT with different structure designs was performed. Based on these results, the optimization and the improvement of gate recessed GaN devices can be defined. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 54:2103–2106, 2012; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.27036