Origin of Soft Breakdown in Thin-Barrier AlGaN/GaN SBD With C-Doped GaN Buffer

In this work, we investigate the soft breakdown (BD) behavior in thin-barrier (TB) AlGaN/GaN Schottky barrier diode (SBD) with carbon-doped GaN buffer. The soft BD behavior is the result of the coupling of multiple mechanisms. In the off-state, the ionized carbon (C) acceptors make the electric fiel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on electron devices 2023-02, Vol.70 (2), p.402-408
Main Authors: Wu, Hao, Kang, Xuanwu, Zheng, Yingkui, Wei, Ke, Zhao, Rikang, Yuan, Yafei, Liu, Xinyu, Zhang, Guoqi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
AlGaN/GaN
Aluminum gallium nitride
Aluminum gallium nitrides
Anodes
Breakdown
Buffers
Carbon
carbon-doped buffer
Cathodes
Coupling (molecular)
Electric fields
Gallium nitrides
gated-edge-termination
HEMTs
Ionization
Leakage
MODFETs
Schottky barrier diode (SBD)
Schottky diodes
soft breakdown (BD)
Temperature measurement
thin barrier (TB)
Wide band gap semiconductors
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Summary:In this work, we investigate the soft breakdown (BD) behavior in thin-barrier (TB) AlGaN/GaN Schottky barrier diode (SBD) with carbon-doped GaN buffer. The soft BD behavior is the result of the coupling of multiple mechanisms. In the off-state, the ionized carbon (C) acceptors make the electric field ( {E} -field) crowd at the cathode and cause the impact ionization. Then, the holes generated by impact ionization compensate with the ionized C acceptors, thus suppressing {E} -field crowding and preventing the further avalanche BD. The residual holes flow to and accumulate under the anode, which leads to a continuous increase in the Schottky {E} -field and Schottky leakage, eventually causing the soft BD. Due to the tunneling effect, Schottky leakage is highly sensitive to the Schottky {E} -field in TB structure, so the leakage rise rate during soft BD is abnormally high.
ISSN:0018-9383
1557-9646
DOI:10.1109/TED.2022.3227223