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Hydrogen-Sensing Properties of A Pd/Algan/Gan-Based Field-Effect Transistor Under A Nitrogen Ambience
Hydrogen-Sensing Properties of A Pd/Algan/Gan-Based Field-Effect Transistor Under A Nitrogen Ambience
5, MAY 2013
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Hydrogen-Sensing Properties of a
Pd/AlGaN/GaN-Based Field-Effect Transistor
Under a Nitrogen Ambience
Chi-Shiang Hsu, Huey-Ing Chen, Po-Cheng Chou, Jian-Kai Liou, Chun-Chia Chen, Chung-Fu Chang,
and Wen-Chau Liu, Senior Member, IEEE
I. I NTRODUCTION
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(a)
Fig. 1. Schematic cross section and top view of surface of the studied
Pd/AlGaN/GaN heterostructure field-effect transistor (HFET)-based hydrogen
sensor. The corresponding energy band diagrams near the gate regime at
equilibrium (solid lines) and under the introduction of hydrogen gas (dashed
lines) under a nitrogen ambience are also illustrated.
system on a c-plane sapphire substrate. The epitaxial structure included a 18 nm-thick undoped AlN buffer layer, a
800 nm-thick undoped AlGaN buffer layer, a 400 nm-thick
undoped GaN buffer layer, a 20 nm-thick GaN active channel
layer with a donor concentration of 4 1017 cm3 , and a
30 nm-thick n-Al0.3 Ga0.7 N Schottky contact layer with the
carrier concentration of 1 1018 cm3 . Hydrochloric acid,
acetone, and deionized water were used to clean the surface
of wafer. Before device fabrication, the mesa isolation was
formed by an inductively-coupled-plasma reactive ion etching
(ICP-RIE) system to etch specific regions on the wafer surface.
Traditional photolithography, vacuum evaporation, and lift-off
techniques were used to form device patterns. The metals
Ti (10 nm)/Al (150 nm) were formed on the surface of
Al0.3 Ga0.7 N layer as Ohmic contacts by vacuum deposition
and annealing at 900 C for 1 min. Then, 20 nm of Pd was
deposited by vacuum evaporation to form the Schottky contact.
The gate dimension was about 1100 m2 . The Schottky contact area was 2.05103 cm2 . The device characteristics were
measured by an HP Agilent 4155C semiconductor characteristic analyzer. Different-concentration hydrogen gases were
introduced for hydrogen sensing measurement. The schematic
cross section and top view of surface of the studied sensing
device are depicted in Fig. 1.
III. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
The measured current-voltage (I-V) characteristics, at 30 C,
of the studied Pd/AlGaN HFET-based hydrogen sensor under
a nitrogen atmosphere are shown in Fig. 2(a). Different
hydrogen concentrations of 500 ppb, 1, 50, 500, and 2000
ppm H2 /N2 are employed. The applied gate-source voltage
(VGS ) is decreased from 0 to 4 V with 1V/step. Clearly,
the studied device shows good transistor characteristics under
nitrogen and hydrogen ambiences. It is known that, under a
nitrogen atmosphere, the influence of oxygen including the
(b)
Fig. 2. Current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of the studied sensor device with
different hydrogen gas concentration under a nitrogen ambience at (a) 30 C
and (b) 250 C.
(1)
Fig. 2(b) shows corresponding I-V characteristics of the studied hydrogen sensor device at 250 C. It is known that the
temperature is an important factor to affect hydrogen sensing properties. At higher temperature, hydrogen atoms may
gain higher energy to facilitate the surface chemical reaction.
Yet, the sticking coefficient of hydrogen gas is decreased with
increasing the temperature, which results in lower hydrogen
coverage at the Pd/AlGaN interface. Therefore, the hydrogen
atoms action and related hydrogen sensing performance will
be substantially influenced by the competition of these two
mechanisms mentioned above. As seen in Fig. 2, the drain current is increased with increasing the hydrogen concentration.
Even at a low hydrogen concentration of 500 ppb H2 /N2 and
high temperature environment, the studied device still exhibits
good HFET and hydrogen sensing performance. The hydrogen
sensing current is defined as the deviation value between the
drain saturation current (I D ) of the studied device as exposed
to hydrogen-containing gas and pure nitrogen ambience.
The drain saturation current variation (I D ) could be defined
as:
I D = I D,H2 I D,2
(a)
(2)
where I D,H 2 and I D,N2 are drain saturation currents measured in hydrogen-contained and nitrogen ambiences, respectively. Clearly, larger I D values yield better hydrogen sensing
behaviors.
Figs. 3(a) and 3(b) show the drain saturation current variation (I D ) as a function of gate-source voltage VGS (from
0 to 6 V) under the introduction of different-concentration
hydrogen gases. Enlarged views of the corresponding characteristics under VGS -4.0 V are illustrated in insets of
Figs. 3 (a) and 3 (b). Clearly, the I D is increased with increasing the hydrogen concentration in a nitrogen ambience. Yet,
the increasing magnitude goes to a quasi-saturated level once
the hydrogen concentration is higher than 500 ppm H2 /N2 . The
peak I D values are 32 (40) and 2(6) mA/mm at 30 C (250 C)
under the introduction of 2000 ppm and 500 ppb H2 /N2
gases, respectively. Thus good hydrogen sensing performance
is observed even at a higher operating temperature (250 C).
The threshold voltage variation (Vth ) as a function of
hydrogen concentration are shown in Fig. 4. The drain-source
voltage is fixed at VDS = 7 V. The threshold voltage variation
Vth are 0.13 (0.01), 0.16 (0.09), 0.46 (0.77), 0.43 (1.28), and
0.44 (1.27) V upon exposing to 0.5, 1, 50, 500, and 2000
ppm H2 /N2 gases, respectively, at 30 C (250 C). Clearly, the
magnitude of Vth is increased with increasing to the hydrogen
concentration. The Vth values of the studied device at 250 C
are higher than those at 30 C. Thus, good hydrogen sensing
performance is observed at a higher operating temperature
(250 C), as mentioned above.
These properties demonstrate the benefit of the studied
device for high-temperature hydrogen sensing under a nitrogen
atmosphere.
The hydrogen sensing behaviors could be estimated by a
drain current sensitivity S|(H2 N2 ) as [30]:
I D,H 2 I D,N2
S|(H2 N2 ) =
(A/mm ppm H2 /N2 )
C H2
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(3)
(b)
Fig. 3.
Drain saturation current variation I D as a function of gatesource voltage VGS with different hydrogen concentrations at (a) 30 C and
(b) 250 C under nitrogen ambience.
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Fig. 5. Relationship between drain current sensitivity S(H2 /N2 ) and hydrogen
concentration at different temperatures.
Fig. 6. Transient response curves upon the introduction and removal of different hydrogen gases under a nitrogen ambience at 30 C. Inset: corresponding
characteristics under the introduced extremely low concentration hydrogen
gases (10 and 100 ppb H2 /N2 ).
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Po-Cheng Chou received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from ISU, 2010, where he is
currently pursuing the M.S. degree at the Institute of
Microelectronics and Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng-Kung University, Tainan,
Taiwan.
His current research interests include semiconductor gas sensors.
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