Solid-State Electronics 53 (2009) 955–958

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Solid-State Electronics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/sse

The improvement of ohmic contact of Ti/Al/Ni/Au to AlGaN/GaN HEMT

by multi-step annealing method
Qian Feng, Li-Mei Li, Yue Hao *, Jin-Yu Ni, Jin-Cheng Zhang
The Institute of Microelectronics, Xi’Dian University, Xi’an 710071, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A multi-step rapid thermal annealing process of Ti/Al/Ni/Au was investigated for ohmic contact of AlGaN/
Received 25 September 2008 GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT). The samples were studied by Transmission Line Model
Received in revised form 9 May 2009 (TLM), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) and X-ray Photoelectron
Accepted 1 June 2009
Spectroscopy (XPS) measurements. By the multi-step annealing process, the specific contact resistance
Available online 28 June 2009
was decreased from 10 5 X cm2 level to 4–3  10 6 X cm2 and the surface morphology was improved.
The review of this paper was arranged by The AES measurements showed that the limitation indiffusion of Au and outdiffusion of Al were account
Prof. E. Calleja for the surface morphology improvement and the surface Fermi level towards the conduction-band edge
resulted in a lower specific contact resistance.
Keywords: Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
AlGaN
GaN
HEMT
Ohmic contacts

1. Introduction 2. Device processing and experimental measurements

AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMT) are excel-
lent candidates for high power applications at microwave frequen-
cies and high-temperature electronic devices [1,2]. One critical
demand for high power application is materials with high temper-
ature stability [3]. High quality, low-resistance ohmic contacts are
a vital part of AlGaN/GaN HEMT technology [4], in addition, these
ohmic contacts are required to have high thermal stability and
smooth surface morphology to ensure dependable high tempera-
ture performance and to facilitate sharp edge acuity for short chan-
nel devices, respectively [5]. The development of contact
metallizations for such device applications has relied, for the most
part, on processes adopted for GaN epilayers, for which multilayer
contacts have been utilized to obtain low-resistance ohmic perfor-
mance. Among the many contact metallization schemes reported
in the literature, Ti/Al-based contacts are the most widely utilized.
Ti based metallization schemes reduce contact resistance by form-
ing an intermetallic alloy with a low work function on GaN and Al-
GaN surfaces [6]. In this paper, a multi-step annealing scheme of
Ti/Al/Ni/Au was developed, standard Transmission Line Model
(TLM) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) measurements
are investigated on AlGaN/GaN structures [7].
* Corresponding author. Address: Microelectronics Institute, Xi’Dian University,
No. 2 TaiBai South Road, Xi’an City, ShaanXi Province, China. Tel.: +86 29
88202073x610; fax: +86 29 88202073x616.
E-mail addresses: fengrose@hotmail.com (Q. Feng), yhao@xidian.edu.cn (Y. Hao).
The AlGaN/GaN heterojunction structure is grown on a 2 in.
c-face sapphire substrate by metal organic chemical vapor deposi-
tion (MOCVD). The layer structure consists of a 1 lm thick nond-
oped-GaN layer and 25-nm Al0.3Ga0.7N barrier layer which is
doped with silicon of approximately 2  1018 cm 3. The measured
room temperature Hall mobility and sheet carrier concentration
are 1150 cm2/V s and 1.2  1013 cm 2, respectively. The Ti(20 nm)/
Al(90 nm)/Ni(55 nm)/Au(45 nm) (sample A), Ti(20 nm)/
Al(120 nm)/Ni(55 nm)/Au(45 nm) (sample B) and Ti(20 nm)/
Al(150 nm)/Ni(55 nm)/Au(45 nm) (sample C) contacts are depos-
ited by an e-beam evaporation system. Before deposition, the sur-
faces of the samples were treated by the HF:HCl:H2O = 1:1:8
solution to remove native oxide layer. Then the as-deposited sam-
ples are introduced into a rapidly thermal processing (RTP) system
for annealing in N2 ambient. The specific contact resistance was
recorded by TLM measurements, the contacts of which are rectan-
gular (90  90 lm), separated by 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15 and 20 lm.
3. Results and discussion
Fig. 1 shows a typical behavior of the extracted Rc values as a
function of the annealing temperature for the three ohmic contact
systems analyzed. As shown in Fig. 1, the contact resistance qc de-
creases as the annealing temperature increases from 600 °C to
830 °C and the lowest value of 8.4  10 6 X cm2 is obtained in
sample B. In order to discern the annealing temperature influence

0038-1101/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.sse.2009.06.002
956 Q. Feng et al. / Solid-State Electronics 53 (2009) 955–958
Fig. 1. Dependence of qc of Ti/Al/Ni/Au on annealing temperature for 45 s.
Fig. 2. AES depth profiles of Ti/Al/Ni/Au contacts on AlGaN as deposited (a), annealed at 750 °C for 45 s in N2 (b), annealed at 830 °C for 45 s in N2 (c), annealed at 900 °C for
45 s in N2(d), and annealed by multi-step (e).
on the ohmic contact resistance, Auger electron spectroscopy (AES)
experiments are made of sample B. The separate layers of Ti, Al, Ni
and Au on AlGaN epilayer can be clearly seen in the as-deposited
profile (as shown in Fig. 2a). When the annealing temperature is
low to some extent, the reaction between Ti and AlGaN epilayer re-
sults in the TiN , which has a high potential barrier between TiN
and AlGaN, but the diffusion of Al atoms through the Ti layer to
form the low work function Al–Ti of the intermetallic phase is lim-
ited (as shown in Fig. 2b), the ohmic contact property is poor and
the specific contact resistance is high. When we compared Fig. 2c
with Fig. 2b, the atom percentage of Al is up to 23 other than 15
after sputtering the ohmic contact for 50 min, it is obvious that
much Al diffuses to AlGaN surface and reacts with Ti as the tem-
perature increases from 750 °C to 830 °C, so the contact resistance
decreases. When the annealing temperature increases beyond the
critical value (as shown in Fig. 2d), the significant intermetallic dif-
fusion have occurred, notably indiffusion of Au towards AlGaN
interface for the atom percentage of Au is decreased from 35 to
24 after sputtering 7 min while it is equal to 20% after sputtering
30 min and outdiffusion of Al towards the contact surface for the
 Q. Feng et al. / Solid-State Electronics 53 (2009) 955–958 957

Fig. 3. Surface morphology of the ohmic contact systems after annealing: (a) T = 750 °C for 45 s, (b) T = 830 °C for 45 s, and (c) multi-step annealing.

Fig. 4. XRD measurements for the sample C.

Fig. 6. qc Variation of three samples by different annealing method.

atom percentage of Al is increased from 45 to 54 after sputtering

Fig. 5. I–V characteristics of ohmic contact after each step during multi-step
annealing process.
10 min , which is the possible cause of the severe degradation of
the contact characteristics. However, when the annealing temper-
ature increases from 750 °C to 830 °C (as shown in Fig. 3), the oh-
mic contact surface morphology degrades obviously.
As mentioned above, The surface of contact is smooth at 750 °C,
when the annealing temperature increases to 830 °C, the nonmetal-
lic matters are discerned on the surface, by XRD measurements, the
nonmetallic matters are the AlN (as shown in Fig. 4) So the severe
degradation of morphology will badly influence the evaporation of
solder disk, although low qc can be obtained in this case. Although
the high-temperature annealing time must be as short as possible
to prevent the morphology degradation of Ti/Al/Ni/Au contact, the
short annealing time will be disadvantageous to obtain low qc ohmic
contacts. We next bring forward the multi-step annealing method,
in which the temperature is increased to 400 °C and annealed for
3 min, then the temperature is increased to 700 °C and annealed
for 20 s, finally the temperature is increased to 830 °C and annealed
958 Q. Feng et al. / Solid-State Electronics 53 (2009) 955–958
Fig. 7. Photoemission spectra of the Ga3p core-level of sample B by different annealing method.
for 30 s. The former low-temperature annealing for a long time will
eliminate the effects of the contamination and/or oxide layer, and al-
low the substrate temperature reach to 400 °C uniformly, while the
following step is to upgrade the metal Al diffusion to the AlGaN film
and allow Ti, Al and AlGaN/GaN to preliminarily react. The last high-
temperature annealing for a short time will reduce qc and not de-
grade the morphology of contact.
As shown in Fig. 5, the I–V characteristic is nonlinear after
400 °C annealing, after further 700 °C annealing, the ohmic contact
has been obtained but the slope is not steep enough and after the
last annealing step, the slope is the steepest and the property of
ohmic contact is improved.
In addition, Fig. 6 shows the qc variation of samples between
830 °C annealing and multi-step annealing. It is observed that qc
decreases to 4–3  10 6 X cm2 in sample B and the surface mor-
phology is improved obviously (as shown in Fig. 3c). This indicates
that multi-step annealing method is appropriate to obtain both
low resistance and good morphology contact.
To investigate the decrease of specific contact resistance after
multi-step annealing, AES measurement was also made of sample
B (as shown in Fig. 2e). Comparing Fig. 2c with Fig. 2e, we can sup-
pose during the second step of multi-step annealing process, Al
atoms began to diffuse through the Ti layer to reach the AlGaN epi-
layer and react with Ti to decrease the barrier height. As the
annealing temperature increases to 830 °C, the Au indiffusion
and the Al outdiffusion are restrained for the atom percentage of
Au is still 15% after sputtering 35 min (as shown in Fig. 2c) while
it is about to zero after 25 min (as shown in Fig. 2e) and that of
Al is decreased from 30 to 25 after sputtering 10 min, in order to
ensure the variation of the metal/AlGaN interface during different
annealing method, the ohmic metal was etched away to expose Al-
GaN/metal interface. The Ga3p core level XPS spectra for the sam-
ple B interface before and after different annealing are shown in
Fig. 7. For the sample annealed in 830 °C for 45 s (Fig. 7a), the
Ga3p core level shifts toward the high-binding energy side of
0.53 eV, compared to the as-deposited one, while after multi-step
annealing, the Ga3p core level shifts toward the high-binding en-
ergy side of 0.72 eV (Fig. 7b). This indicates that the annealing
causes a shift of the surface Fermi level toward the conduction-
band edge [8,9], resulting in a reduction of the surface barrier
height to AlGaN/GaN heterostructure.
4. Conclusions
In conclusion, TLM, SEM, AES and XPS measurements have been
performed to investigate the effect of Ti/Al/Ni/Au ohmic contact by
annealing. A good ohmic contact was obtained when the sample
was annealed by multi-step. Based on the AES results, the im-
proved surface morphology was attributed to the limitation indif-
fusion of Au and outdiffusion of Al and the decreased specific
contact resistance was explained in terms of the shift of the surface
Fermi level towards the conduction-band edge.
Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the National Advanced Research Pro-
gram (Grant No. 51308030102) and Xi’an Applied Materials Inno-
vation Fund (Grant No. XA-AM-200616).
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