Electrical properties of GaN metal-insulator-semiconductor field-effect transistors with Al2O3/GaN interfaces formed on vicinal Ga-polar and nonpolar surfaces

GaN metal-insulator-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MISFETs) with Ni/Al2O3/GaN gate stack structures formed on a vicinal Ga-polar (c-plane) or nonpolar (m-plane) surface were fabricated. Current–voltage characteristics and carrier transport properties of the channels in the MISFETs with and without post-metallization annealing (PMA) were systematically investigated. GaN layers grown on freestanding substrates with vicinal surfaces led to good transistor behaviors for the m-plane as well as the c-plane. It was found that PMA improves the electron mobility in the MIS channel (μEFF) for both the c- and m-planes, and that μEFF for the m-plane is slightly higher than that for the c-plane both with and without PMA. Temperature dependences of μEFF clarified that μEFF for the m-plane is dominantly limited by phonon scattering, while both Coulomb and phonon scatterings are dominant for the c-plane. Consequently, we achieved high performance for the GaN MISFETs fabricated on the m-plane because of the reduced numbers of Coulomb scattering centers at the Al2O3/GaN interface.