Impact of Residual Carbon on Avalanche Voltage and Stability of Polarization-Induced Vertical GaN p-n Junction

• Published in: IEEE transactions on electron devices 2020-10, Vol.67 (10), p.3978-3982
• Main Authors: Fabris, Elena, De Santi, Carlo, Caria, Alessandro, Mukherjee, Kalparupa, Nomoto, Kazuki, Hu, Zongyang, Li, Wenshen, Gao, Xiang, Marchand, Hugues, Jena, Debdeep, Xing, Huili Grace, Meneghesso, Gaudenzio, Zanoni, Enrico, Meneghini, Matteo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Avalanche; Avalanche diodes; Breakdown; Breakdown voltage; Carbon; Electric breakdown; Electric fields; Electric potential; Electrical junctions; Electronic devices; Gallium nitride; Gallium nitrides; Leakage; Optimization; p-n junction; P-n junctions; Photocapacitance; Secondary ion mass spectroscopy; Stability; Stability analysis; Stress; Thermal stability; vertical diodes; Vertical polarization; Voltage; wide bandgap
• ISSN: 0018-9383; 1557-9646
• DOI: 10.1109/TED.2020.2993192

We demonstrate that the residual carbon concentration in the drift region can have a significant impact on the reverse leakage, breakdown voltage, and breakdown stability of GaN-on-GaN vertical diodes. Two generations (Gen1, Gen2) of polarization-doped p-n junctions with different C concentrations were compared, in terms of avalanche voltage, avalanche instability, and deep-level concentration. The original results collected within this paper show that: 1) both generations of devices can safely reach the avalanche regime; diodes with a lower residual C N have a higher reverse leakage and a lower avalanche voltage, due to an uneven distribution of the electric field; 2) the presence of residual carbon can lead to breakdown walkout, i.e. a recoverable increase in breakdown voltage under reverse-bias stress. Specifically, devices with higher C concentration show a fully-recoverable breakdown walkout, whereas the breakdown voltage is stable in devices with lower C concentration; and 3) steady-state photocapacitance measurements confirm the presence of C N in both generations, and are used to assess the relative difference in concentration between Gen1 and Gen2, even for levels below secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) sensitivity. The results described in this paper indicate the existence of a trade-off between breakdown voltage (increasing by improving compensation) and breakdown stability (improving by reducing C N concentration) and are of fundamental importance for the optimization of GaN power devices.