Corrosion-induced degradation of GaAs PHEMTs under operation in high humidity conditions

Abstract

The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. CitationHisaka, Takayuki et al. "Corrosion-induced degradation of GaAs PHEMTs under operation in high humidity conditions."

Simultaneous achievement of high performance and high reliability in a 38/77GHz InGaAs/AlGaAs PHEMT MMIC

“…Just prior to the deposition of the passivation film, a surface treatment that consists of dipping the wafer in a benzenoid-aromatic-compound-based organic solvent was performed. The treatment effectively reduces the amount of As-oxide at the semiconductor surface as reported previously [3]. treatment shows almost the same P out and G c as sample (a) without surface treatment.…”

“…Double heterostructure AlGaAs/InGaAs PHEMTs [3] with around 0.2 µm gate length were fabricated for this study. The gate region was wet-chemically recessed to a desired drain current and metalized with Ti/Al for the gate electrode.…”

“…We have concluded that PHEMT degradation is caused by an electrochemical corrosion reaction between the semiconductor and H 2 O that takes place at the SiN x /semiconductor interface on the drain side of the device. We also demonstrated that a special surface treatment to reduce oxygen at the semiconductor surface can effectively suppress the degradation without any loss of RF performance [3]. In the present work, we have adopted the surface treatment in the fabrication of 38/77 GHz MMICs transmit amplifier using AlGaAs/InGaAs PHEMTs for automotive radar.…”

“…We have previously reported a comprehensive study of degradation of AlGaAs/InGaAs PHEMTs during operation under high humidity conditions [3,4]. We have concluded that PHEMT degradation is caused by an electrochemical corrosion reaction between the semiconductor and H 2 O that takes place at the SiN x /semiconductor interface on the drain side of the device.…”

The Design and Life Test of a Multifunction Power Amplifier for Space Application

“…The high gate-drain voltage stress used for large signal test is provided to evaluate hot electron effect [10][11][12]. The test of hydrogen effects which caused the degradation of maximum drain current and surface corrosion is introduced in [13][14][15].…”