Quantitative analysis of the trapping effect on terahertz AlGaN/GaN resonant tunneling

diode
Lin’an Yang, Hanbing He, Wei Mao, and Yue Hao

Citation: Appl. Phys. Lett. 99, 153501 (2011);

View online: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3650253
View Table of Contents: http://aip.scitation.org/toc/apl/99/15
Published by the American Institute of Physics

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 APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS 99, 153501 (2011)

Quantitative analysis of the trapping effect on terahertz AlGaN/GaN resonant

tunneling diode
Lin’an Yang,a) Hanbing He, Wei Mao, and Yue Hao
State Key Discipline Laboratory of Wide Band Gap Semiconductor Technology, School of Microelectronics,
Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China

(Received 30 June 2011; accepted 21 September 2011; published online 10 October 2011)
We report on a simulation for terahertz aluminum gallium nitride (AlGaN)/gallium nitride (GaN)
resonant tunneling diode (RTD) at room temperature by introducing deep-level defects into the
polarized AlGaN/GaN/AlGaN quantum well. Results show that an evident degradation in
negative-differential-resistance characteristic of RTD occurs when the defect density is higher
than 106 cm2, which is consistent with the measurements of the state-of-the-art GaN RTDs. At
around 300 GHz, the simulation for a RTD oscillator also demonstrates evident decreases of rf
power and efficiency because of the electron trapping effect. V C 2011 American Institute of

Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3650253]

Nitride based resonant tunneling diode (RTD) is one of
the promising candidates in terahertz regime because nitrides
exhibit excellent properties such as high peak electron veloc-
ity, saturation electron velocity, and thermal stability. Alu-
minum nitride (AlN)/gallium nitride (GaN) and aluminum
gallium nitride (AlGaN)/GaN double-barrier RTDs grown
on different substrates have been fabricated in recent
years.1–5 AlN/GaN RTD was expected to have higher peak-
to-valley current ratio (PVCR), but the significant lattice-
mismatch at AlN/GaN heterointerface raises the surface
roughness and dislocations,5 and the large band gap of AlN
reduces the tunneling probability;6 therefore, the diode dem-
onstrates a low current density and a high tunneling resist-
ance. AlGaN/GaN RTD with lower Al composition in
AlGaN barrier layer was proposed to reduce the lattice-
mismatch, suppress the dislocation density, and weaken the
piezoelectric field at the heterointerface.1 Meanwhile, tre-
mendous efforts have been made to reduce the defect density
in GaN heterostructures, e.g., GaN epitaxial layers were
grown on homogeneous or nonpolar-plane heterogeneous
(silicon carbide and sapphire) substrates.1,4,7 But the per-
formance of GaN RTDs is yet behind the expectation com-
paring with traditional III-V compound semiconductor
RTDs.8,9 Particularly, the electrical measurements of GaN
RTDs demonstrate that the PVCR of current-voltage (I-V)
curve evidently degrades with a rising scan number of the
bias sweep.1–5 The phenomenon is attributed to the charge
trapping effect at the interface and the inner of heterostruc-
ture since the trapped charges lower the effective barrier
height, alter the dominant transport mechanism, and finally,
cause an instability of negative-differential-resistance (NDR)
characteristic.3,4 So far, available terahertz signals of GaN
RTDs have not been obtained because the terahertz oscilla-
tion is hardly generated in the case of instable NDR. In this
paper, we employ a SILVACO simulator to investigate the
output performance of AlGaN/GaN double-barrier RTD at
room temperature. The deep-level defects at AlGaN/GaN
a)
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic mail:
layang@xidian.edu.cn.
heterointerface are quantitatively analyzed to reveal the
charge trapping effect on the steady state and instantaneous
characteristics of RTD.
The RTD structure for simulation consists of an n-type
AlGaN/GaN/AlGaN active region sandwiched between two
100-nm thick nþ-GaN ohmic contact regions, and two 5-nm
thick GaN spacers inserted between the contact region and
the active region, respectively, to prevent the dopant diffu-
sion. The active region and the spacer are unintentionally
doped at 1  1016 cm3, and the ohmic contact region is heav-
ily doped at 1  1018 cm3. The specific contact resistivity of
the ohmic contact region is set as low as 1  106 X cm2 in
order to enhance the performance of active region. The
AlGaN barrier layer with an Al composition of 30% is sug-
gested to increase the output efficiency. The thickness of
AlGaN barrier and GaN well ranges from 1 to 3 nm, respec-
tively, where we put an emphasis on the AlGaN/GaN/AlGaN
structure of 2/2/2 nm. The diode section area is set to be 28 lm2.
For the polarized AlGaN/GaN/AlGaN quantum well, we
introduce interface charges into the heterostructure, where
the charge density as a function of Al composition and thick-
ness can be quantitatively calculated.10,11 Concerning to
the charge trapping effect in AlGaN/GaN heterostructure,
numerous deep-level transient spectroscopy measurements
have demonstrated that most of the dislocation induced traps
seem to be the interface electron traps located on the AlGaN
side of AlGaN/GaN heterointerface, where the distribution
and the magnitude of traps closely depend on the Al compo-
sition of barrier layer, the configuration of quantum well,
and the substrate the epitaxial grown on. In this work, we
take several of the dominant traps into account, such as the
activation energy (Ea) of 0.93 eV with a capture cross-
section of 1.2  1013 cm2 which is regarded to be strongly
dependent on the Al composition of the AlGaN barrier,12 Ea
of 0.33 eV with a capture cross-section of 8.719  1019 cm2
which is related to the substrate,13 and Ea of 1.0 eV with a
capture cross-section of 2.0  1012 cm2 which is believed
to be associated with threading dislocations.14
At first, we introduce a variable density of aforementioned
deep-level defects into the AlGaN/GaN/AlGaN (2/2/2 nm)

0003-6951/2011/99(15)/153501/3/$30.00 99, 153501-1 C 2011 American Institute of Physics

V
153501-2 Yang et al.
quantum well to simulate I-V characteristics of RTD under
the forward- and backward-scans of bias sweep. Fig. 1(a)
shows the simulated I-V characteristics under the first
forward-scan of bias voltage, and (b) shows the peak current
IP and the valley current IV as a function of forward-scan
number, both at the defect densities of 5  103–5  1011
cm2. It is observed that a serious degradation of I-V charac-
teristics occurs when the defect density is higher than
5  109 cm2 and even the NDR totally disappears when
the defect density approaches 1011 cm2 under the first
forward-scan (see Fig. 1(a)), which means the quantum well
is not capable of generating a stable NDR characteristic at a
high density of defects. With a rising scan number of the bias
sweep, the degradation becomes more evident, which is con-
sistent with previous measurements of AlGaN/GaN RTDs,
and supports the proposal that the degradation is actually
attributed to the action of unreleased charges in trapping cen-
ter.3,4 The simulation also shows that the reproducible NDR
characteristic is assured when the defect density decreases to
below 106 cm2 (see Fig. 1(b)), which further implies that
material improvement is imperative for more reliable NDR
characteristic in RTD.
Second, we investigate the performance of AlGaN/GaN
RTD with a quantum well of 2/2/2 nm and a defect density
of 5  108 cm2 by using steady state and instantaneous sim-
ulations. Fig. 2 shows the simulated I-V characteristics under
the 1st, 15th, and 20th forward- and backward-scans of bias
voltage, respectively. The current hysteresis appearing on I-
V characteristics and the NDR degradation with increasing
scan number is closely consistent with the measurements on
real AlGaN/GaN RTDs,15 which implies that it hardly sus-
tains a stable output performance at terahertz frequency. For
FIG. 1. (a) Simulated I-V characteristics of AlGaN/GaN RTD under the first
forward-scan of bias voltage and (b) dependence of IP and IV with respect to
forward-scan number. The defect density varies from 5  103 to 5  1011
cm–2.
Appl. Phys. Lett. 99, 153501 (2011)
FIG. 2. I-V characteristics of AlGaN/GaN RTD with a defect density of
5  108 cm2 under the 1st, 15th, and 20th forward- and backward-scans of
bias voltage.
instantaneous simulation, we first build an equivalent circuit
model of RTD that includes an analytical model of NDR
characteristic and a parasitic large signal capacitance
(Cs ¼ 8  1014 F) and a parasitic resistance (Rs ¼ 7 X)
which are extracted from the steady state simulation, then
mount the model to an external RLC resonant circuit
(L ¼ 3.52 pH, C ¼ 2.25  1014 F, Rp ¼ 15 X) to form a
NDR oscillator working at terahertz frequency. At a bias
voltage of 1.33 V, the stable oscillation is created and the
output current through the external parallel resistance Rp is
extracted. Under the 1st, 20th, and 50th scans, respectively,
the model of degraded NDR characteristic certainly causes
an evident degradation in current waveforms, as is observed
in Fig. 3, in which the frequency decreases from 323 to 299
GHz, the rf power on Rp decreases from 21 to 7.5 mW, and
the efficiency decreases from 10.3% to 3.9%, respectively. It
is also found that the calculated rf power of GaN RTD is at
least two orders of magnitude larger than traditional III-V
compound semiconductor RTDs, which will be a distin-
guished performance for application in terahertz regime if
the NDR degradation is eliminated by lowering the defect
density.
Third, we investigate the influence of AlGaN/GaN/
AlGaN quantum well structure on the NDR characteristics of
RTD, where the defect density is still set as 5  108 cm2.
Fig. 4(a) shows the variation of NDR characteristic with the
FIG. 3. Simulated ac current through Rp of NDR oscillator based on the
AlGaN/GaN RTD with a defect density of 5  108 cm2 by using the RTD
model under the 1st, 20th, and 50th scans, respectively.
153501-3 Yang et al.
FIG. 4. Dependence of I-V characteristics of AlGaN/GaN RTD with a
defect density of 5  108 cm2 on (a) AlGaN barrier thickness and (b) GaN
well thickness, under the first forward-scan of bias voltage.
AlGaN thickness ranging from 1 nm to 3 nm and a fixed
GaN thickness of 2 nm. It is found that IP evidently
decreases with rising AlGaN thickness, which is mainly due
to that the transmission coefficient is inversely proportional
to the barrier thickness.16 The peak voltage VP also decreases
from 1.06 to 0.76 V, which is probably attributed to a
decreased voltage across the parasitic resistance. Fig. 4(b)
gives the variation of NDR characteristic with the GaN
thickness ranging from 1 nm to 3 nm and a fixed AlGaN
thickness of 2 nm, also showing decreases in IP and VP with
a rising GaN thickness. An evident reduction of VP from 1.6
to 0.6 V and a reduction of the excess-current are caused by
a decrease in resonant energy level with a widening of
quantum-well.17 These results qualitatively agree with previ-
ous measurements of GaAs based RTDs.18,19 For the state-
of-the-art GaN RTDs, the electrical measurements have yet
demonstrated considerable differences in magnitude of VP,
which is actually caused by poor ohmic contacts, in part, by
parasitic resistance of depletion region near anode.
In summary, we propose a simulation for terahertz
AlGaN/GaN RTD by introducing quantitative deep-level
defects and polarized charges into AlGaN/GaN/AlGaN
quantum well to reveal the mechanism of NDR degradation
Appl. Phys. Lett. 99, 153501 (2011)
in RTD. Results demonstrate that the defect density of below
106 cm2 is imperative for RTD to generate a reproducible
NDR characteristic, and the defect density of 106–109 cm2
leads to an evident NDR degradation with rising number of
either forward- or backward-scans, which is mainly attrib-
uted to the trapping effect of deep-level defects. A simula-
tion for NDR oscillator based on GaN RTD demonstrates
evident decreases in rf power and efficiency at around 300
GHz. In addition, an influence of quantum well structural pa-
rameters on NDR characteristic is also investigated. All the
results are consistent with electrical measurements of the
state-of-the-art GaN RTDs.
This work was supported by National Natural Science
Fund of China under Grant No. 61076079, and Doctoral Pro-
gram Fund of Ministry of Education of China under Grant
No. 20090203110012.
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