Influence of dry etching on nitride semiconductor Schottky characteristics

GaN has attractive physical properties, such as high saturation velocity, high breakdown electric field and good thermal conductivity. Owing to these inherent material properties, GaN and related alloys are attractive materials for high-speed, high-power and high-temperature electronic devices. For production process of electron devices such as recessed gate-AlGaN/GaN FET, a dry etching process is indispensable. Therefore, degradation of electrical properties due to the etching damage has to be considered to improve the device performance. In this work, influences of dry etching process for GaN on the electrical properties and the chemical properties of the surface were investigated.