Low-Temperature Ohmic Contact Formation in AlN/GaN HEMT Using Microwave Annealing

In this brief, a low-temperature microwave annealing (MWA) method is demonstrated for the formation of ohmic contact to AlN/GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) for the first time. Compared with the traditional rapid thermal annealing (RTA) technique, MWA-HEMT can achieve a comparable low ohmic contact resistance with much smoother surface of ohmic contacts. Transmission electron microscopy results show that no direct current path connecting the 2-D electron gas and the metal is formed. Temperature-dependent contact resistance measurement indicates that field emission tunneling dominates the current transport mechanism in ohmic contact formation. The maximum dc output current density of 1.4 A/mm and the peak extrinsic transconductance (Gm) of 270 mS/mm are measured on 2 x 8 mu m(2) gate MWA-HEMTs. Besides, MWA-HEMTs have higher I-ON/I-OFF ratio due to the lower gate leakage current than that of RTA-HEMTs.