Influence of Mg doping level at the initial growth stage on the gate reliability of p-GaN gate HEMTs

This letter has studied the gate reliability of p-GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) influenced by the Mg doping level at the initial growth stage of p-GaN layer. Normally-off HEMTs with p-GaN gate fabricated with relatively low and high Mg doping concentration have been analyzed and compared based on their performances at various statuses of as-fabricated, forward step-stressed, reverse step-stressed and long-term reverse stressed. It reveals that Mg over-doping has a detrimental effect on the p-GaN gate reliability through degrading the PIN diode formed by p-GaN/AlGaN/GaN structure. Severe drain current reduction, threshold voltage instability and gate leakage increase have been observed after being negatively stressed due to the high-density defects acting as apparent acceptor-like traps induced by Mg over-doping. The detailed studies on the p-GaN gate performance with various Mg concentrations give a greater depth of understanding to realize high gate reliability of p-GaN gate HEMTs.