Effects of Threading Dislocations on AlGaN/GaN High-Electron Mobility Transistors

This brief aims to show the effects of threading edge dislocations on the dc and RF performance of GaN high-electron mobility transistor (HEMT) devices. A state-of-the-art high-frequency and high-power HEMT was investigated with our full-band cellular Monte Carlo (CMC) simulator, which includes the full details of the band structure and the phonon spectra. A complete characterization of the device has been performed using experimental data to calibrate the few adjustable parameters of the simulator. Thermal simulations were also carried out with commercial software in order to operate the corrections needed to model thermal effects. The approach of Weimann based on the results of Read, Bonch-Bruevich and Glasko, and Podor was then used to model with our CMC code the dislocation effects on the transport properties of HEMT devices. Our simulations indicate that GaN HEMT performance exhibits a fairly large dependence on the density of thread dislocation defects. Furthermore, we show that a threshold concentration exists, above which a complete degradation of the device operation occurs.