Investigation of traps in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs on silicon substrate

Deep levels in AlGaN/GaN heterostructures are known to be responsible for trapping processes like current collapse or dispersion. In order to investigate these processes we performed different measurements on HEMTs fabricated with heterostructures grown on silicon substrate. First by photoionization spectroscopy we found three different traps with activation energies of about 2.1 eV, 2.9 eV and 3.2 eV. Secondly, the temperature dependent relaxation of the drain current was investigated by the backgating current deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) method. Hereby we detected majority and minority carrier traps in the GaN buffer at the energies EV + 0.41 eV and EC – 0.55 eV, respectively. The latter energy can be attributed to the well known “E2” level in GaN.