Effects of a GaN cap layer on the reliability of AlGaN/GaN Schottky diodes

In this paper, AlGaN/GaN- and GaN/AlGaN/GaN-based Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) were fabricated and studied for comparison. The recorded electrical characteristics of the devices show that the introduction of a GaN cap layer can evidently reduce the reverse leakage current and suppress the forward current decay of the devices. What is more important, the GaN/AlGaN/GaN-based SBDs are capable of greatly alleviating the unrecoverable degradation of the reverse characteristics, which was observed in the device without a GaN cap layer when the device was under long time reverse dc stress. Detailed analyses were discussed.