Electron velocity of 6 × 107 cm/s at 300 K in stress engineered InAlN/GaN nano-channel high-electron-mobility transistors

A stress engineered three dimensional (3D) Triple T-gate (TT-gate) on lattice matched In0.17Al0.83N/GaN nano-channel (NC) Fin-High-Electron-Mobility Transistor (Fin-HEMT) with significantly enhanced device performance was achieved that is promising for high-speed device applications. The Fin-HEMT with 200-nm effective fin-width (Weff) exhibited a very high IDmax of 3940 mA/mm and a highest gm of 1417 mS/mm. This dramatic increase of ID and gm in the 3D TT-gate In0.17Al0.83N/GaN NC Fin-HEMT translated to an extracted highest electron velocity (ve) of 6.0 × 107 cm/s, which is ∼1.89× higher than that of the conventional In0.17Al0.83N/GaN HEMT (3.17 × 107 cm/s). The ve in the conventional III-nitride transistors are typically limited by highly efficient optical-phonon emission. However, the unusually high ve at 300 K in the 3D TT-gate In0.17Al0.83N/GaN NC Fin-HEMT is attributed to the increase of in-plane tensile stress component by SiN passivation in the formed NC which is also verified by micro-photoluminescence (0.47 ± 0.02 GPa) and micro-Raman spectroscopy (0.39 ± 0.12 GPa) measurements. The ability to reach the ve = 6 × 107 cm/s at 300 K by a stress engineered 3D TT-gate lattice-matched In0.17Al0.83N/GaN NC Fin-HEMTs shows they are promising for next-generation ultra-scaled high-speed device applications.