Mobility enhancement in indium-rich N-channel InxGa1−xAs HEMTs by application of <110> uniaxial strain

As in Si CMOS, the incorporation of mechanical strain offers the possibility of improving the performance of III-V field effect transistors (FETs). Quantifying its potential and providing fundamental understanding of the impact of strain are the goals of this study. This paper reports an investigation of the impact of <;110> uniaxial strain on n-type InAlAs/InGaAs HEMTs with a 70% InAs channel core. The main impact of strain is found to be a modification of the electron effective mass and mobility. A comparison between the effect of <;110> strain in Si and InGaAs suggests that strain engineering can indeed be leveraged to improve transport properties in deeply scaled InGaAs FETs.