Abstract
In this study, the electrical characteristics of depletion-mode AlGaN/GaN high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) with a SiN(x) gate dielectric were tested under hydrogen exposure conditions. The experimental results are as follows: (1) After hydrogen treatment at room temperature, the threshold voltage V(TH) of the original device was positively shifted from -16.98 V to -11.53 V, and the positive bias of threshold was 5.45 V. When the V(DS) was swept from 0 to 1 V with V(GS) of 0 V, the I(DS) was reduced by 25% from 9.45 A to 7.08 A. (2) Another group of original devices with identical electrical performance, after the same duration of hydrogen treatment at 100 °C, exhibited a reverse shift in threshold voltage with a negative threshold shift of -0.91 V. The output characteristics were enhanced, and the saturation leakage current was increased. (3) The C-V method and the low-frequency noise method were used to investigate the effect of hydrogen effect on the device interface trap and border trap, respectively. It was found that high-temperature hydrogen conditions can passivate the interface/border traps of SiN(x)/AlGaN, reducing the density of interface/border traps and mitigating the trap capture effect. However, in the room-temperature hydrogen experiment, the concentration of interface/border traps increased. The research findings in this paper provide valuable references for the design and application of depletion-mode AlGaN/GaN HEMT devices.