Study of Low-damage Shallow Recess Technology on the RF Performance of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs

In this article, a gate-recessed AlGaN/GaN HEMT is designed by Low-damage Shallow Recess Technology featuring 8nm etching depth. The device has reduced gate leakage and reduced current collapse. This is due to the improvement of low-damage etching on the AlGaN surface. For a device with an Lsd of 2.5 um, the peak transconductance reaches 443 mS/mm. fT/BVDS at 44 GHz/86 V and fmax/BVDS at 157 GHz/86 V are implemented in a device with a gate width of 100 μm. The device with a gate width of 100 μm has a peak output power density of 4.52 W/mm and a corresponding PAE of 71.86% at 3.6 GHz measured by load pull. This is instructive for the simultaneous realization of high-efficiency and high-power RF power devices for applications such as 5G communications.