Study of Charge Trapping Effects on AlGaN/GaN HEMTs under UV Illumination with Pulsed I-V Measurement

The charge trapping effects on AlGaN/GaN HEMTs under UV illumination are investigated using the pulsed current-voltage (I-V) measurement method. The test samples are unpassivated Schottky-gate HEMTs and metal-insulator-semiconductor HEMTs (MIS-HEMTs) with SiN gate dielectric. For HEMTs, the dominant charge trapping sources are the surface trap states, whereas, for MIS-HEMTs, they are trap states in the SiN gate dielectric and GaN buffer. When these devices are shined with the UV light, the drain current increases apparently in both samples owing to the generated photocurrent. By combining the UV illumination and pulsed I-V measurement, we find out the UV light has less effect on the surface charge trapping in the unpassivated HEMTs. Moreover, in MIS-HEMTs, we observe the charge trapping in the SiN gate dielectric becomes more serious under UV illumination, whereas the charge trapping in the GaN buffer is suppressed significantly. These findings are important for designing a GaN-based HEMT for photonic applications. In addition, the different responses of the surface-, buffer-, and gate-dielectric-related charge trapping to the UV light suggest that it would be easier to distinguish the trap types by introducing the UV illumination during the pulse measurement.