Study on Gate Leakage and Trapping Effect in InAIN/GaN HEMTs

In this paper, the gate leakage and deep-level trapping effect in thin-barrier InAlN/GaN high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) are investigated based on multiple characterization methods such as DC measurement, pulsed current-voltage measurement, capacitance measurement and frequency-dependent conductance method. In addition, the Schottky gate barrier height and ideality factor as well as the trap density under the gate are extracted. The results show that the current hysteresis and current collapse of our samples are mainly induced by the trapping effect with hot-carrier injection rather than the gate-leakage injection mechanism, which indicates that the reduction of gate leakage can improve the DC characteristics but not the dynamic performance.