Improved Microwave Noise Performance by SiN Passivation in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs on Si

Author

Liu, Z.H. ; Arulkumaran, S. ; Ng, G.I.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. & Electron. Eng., Nanyang Technol. Univ., Singapore

Volume

19

Issue

6

fYear

2009

fDate

6/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

383

Lastpage

385

Abstract

Effects of silicon nitride (SiN) surface passivation by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) on microwave noise characteristics of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs on high-resistivity silicon (HR-Si) substrate have been investigated. About 25% improvement in the minimum noise figure (NF _min) (0.52 dB, from 2.03 dB to 1.51 dB) and 10% in the associate gain (G _a) (1.0 dB, from 10.3 dB to 11.3 dB) were observed after passivation. The equivalent circuit parameters and noise source parameters (including channel noise coefficient (P), gate noise coefficient (R), and their correlation coefficient (C)) were extracted. P, R and C all increased after passivation and the increase of C contributes to the decrease of the noise figure. It was found that the improved microwave small signal and noise performance is mainly due to the increase of the intrinsic transconductance (g _m0) and the decrease of the extrinsic source resistance (R _s).

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; aluminium compounds; equivalent circuits; gallium compounds; high electron mobility transistors; microwave field effect transistors; passivation; plasma CVD; semiconductor device models; semiconductor device noise; silicon compounds; wide band gap semiconductors; AlGaN-GaN; HEMT; PECVD; Si; SiN; correlation coefficient; equivalent circuit parameter; extrinsic source resistance; high electron mobility transistor; intrinsic transconductance; microwave noise performance; microwave signal; noise source parameter; plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition; surface passivation; GaN HEMT; Si substrate; modeling; noise; passivation;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1531-1309

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LMWC.2009.2020027

Filename

4967854