TY - JOUR
T1 - Comparison of N- and Ga-face GaN HEMTs through cellular Monte Carlo simulations
AU - Guerra, Diego
AU - Saraniti, Marco
AU - Faralli, Nicolas
AU - Ferry, David K.
AU - Goodnick, Stephen
AU - Marino, Fabio Alessio
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received March 19, 2010; revised August 20, 2010; accepted August 31, 2010. Date of publication October 7, 2010; date of current version November 19, 2010. This work was supported in part by the Air Force Research Laboratory under Contract FA8650-08-C-1395 and in part by the Arizona Institute for Nanoelectronics, Arizona State University. The review of this paper was arranged by Editor S. Bandyopadhyay.
PY - 2010/12
Y1 - 2010/12
N2 - We compare the performance of GaN HEMT devices based on the established Ga-face technology and the emerging N-face technology. Starting from a state-of-the-art N-face device, we obtain the analogous Ga-face layout imposing the constraint of the same channel charge in both structures, and then, we simulate both the configurations with our full-band cellular Monte Carlo simulator, which includes the full details of the band structure and the phonon spectra. Moreover, we define a modeling approach based on gate-to-2-D electron gas distance and capacitance discussions, which allows a fair comparison between the N- and Ga-face technologies. Full direct current and RF simulations were performed and compared with available experimental data for the N-face device in order to calibrate the few adjustable simulator parameters. Our simulations indicate that N-face GaN HEMTs exhibit improved RF performance with respect to Ga-face devices. Furthermore, the use of an AlN layer in N-face devices results in a reduced alloy scattering and offers a strong back-barrier electron confinement to mitigate short-channel effects, thus improving the cutoff frequency for highly scaled devices.
AB - We compare the performance of GaN HEMT devices based on the established Ga-face technology and the emerging N-face technology. Starting from a state-of-the-art N-face device, we obtain the analogous Ga-face layout imposing the constraint of the same channel charge in both structures, and then, we simulate both the configurations with our full-band cellular Monte Carlo simulator, which includes the full details of the band structure and the phonon spectra. Moreover, we define a modeling approach based on gate-to-2-D electron gas distance and capacitance discussions, which allows a fair comparison between the N- and Ga-face technologies. Full direct current and RF simulations were performed and compared with available experimental data for the N-face device in order to calibrate the few adjustable simulator parameters. Our simulations indicate that N-face GaN HEMTs exhibit improved RF performance with respect to Ga-face devices. Furthermore, the use of an AlN layer in N-face devices results in a reduced alloy scattering and offers a strong back-barrier electron confinement to mitigate short-channel effects, thus improving the cutoff frequency for highly scaled devices.
KW - GaN
KW - Monte Carlo
KW - N-face
KW - high frequency
KW - high-electron mobility transistors (HEMT)
KW - numerical simulation
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U2 - 10.1109/TED.2010.2076151
DO - 10.1109/TED.2010.2076151
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:78650012372
SN - 0018-9383
VL - 57
SP - 3348
EP - 3354
JO - IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices
JF - IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices
IS - 12
M1 - 5595023
ER -