Hydrogen-Related Recovery Effect of AlGaN/GaN High-Electron-Mobility Transistors Irradiated by High-Fluence Protons

The related recovery mymargin mymargin effect of hydrogen on AlGaN/gallium nitride (GaN) high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) irradiated by high-fluence protons was investigated in this article. The results show that under the same temperature and time conditions, the recovery effect induced by thermal hydrogen annealing is better than that of ordinary thermal annealing. Compared with the ordinary thermal annealing, the high-fluence proton-irradiated device experienced a 65-mA additional increase in saturation current at the gate-to-source voltage (
$V_{\mathrm {gs}}$
) of 0 V, a 0.074-V additional negative shift of the threshold voltage, a more significant increase in reverse gate leakage current and better gate lag after the hydrogen treatment. The defect densities are extracted by the low-frequency noise method. It shows that the trap density decreases from
$8.32\times 10^{17}$
to
$6.84\times 10^{\mathrm {17 {}}}$
cm
$^{-3}\cdot $
eV
$^{-1}$
after ordinary thermal annealing and then decreases from
$6.84\times 10^{17}$
to
$3.85\times 10^{17}$
cm
$^{-3}\cdot $
eV
$^{-1}$
after hydrogen treatment of an irradiated AlGaN/GaN HEMT. The mechanism for the decrease of trap density after the hydrogen treatment could be attributed to the H-passivated defects in the structures of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs.