Study of Magnesium Activation Effect on Pinch-Off Voltage of Normally-Off p-GaN HEMTs for Power Applications

The role of the magnesium (Mg) doping and its electrical activation on the off-state of p-GaN/AlGaN/GaN HEMTs has been investigated in this work. Firstly, the effect of different Mg doping profiles has been studied via the help of Technology Computer-Aided Design (TCAD) simulations, with the objective of analyzing the band diagrams of the structure. Then, it has been shown how experimental Capacitance–Voltage measurements can be useful to obtain information on the net acceptor concentration in the p-GaN. As a result, devices with an undoped (magnesium-free) GaN gate have been experimentally compared to devices whose p-GaN gate has been activated via a reference annealing process. Finally, results on a device characterized by an improved p-GaN activation have been presented and compared, showing improvements on several parameters of both off- and on-state, thus underlining the key role of the Mg activation process in the overall performances of normally-off GaN HEMTs.