Negative Bias-Induced Threshold Voltage Instability in GaN-on-Si Power HEMTs

This letter reports an in-depth study of the negative threshold voltage instability in GaN-on-Si metal-insulator-semiconductor high electron mobility transistors with partially recessed AlGaN. Based on a set of stress/recovery experiments carried out at several temperatures, we demonstrate that: 1) operation at high temperatures and negative gate bias (-10 V) may induce a significant negative threshold voltage shift, that is well correlated to a decrease in ON-resistance; 2) this process has time constants in the range between 10-100 s, and is accelerated by temperature, with activation energy equal to 0.37 eV; and 3) the shift in threshold voltage is recoverable, with logarithmic kinetics. The negative shift in threshold voltage is ascribed to the depletion of trap states located at the SiN/AlGaN interface and/or in the gate insulator.