In this study, the breakdown behavior of a calibrated depletion mode AlGaN/GaN transistor with a nitrogen-implanted gate region was simulated and analyzed using Sentaurus TCAD simulation, with particular emphasis on the metal contact design rule for a GaN-based high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) device with a variety of 2DEG concentrations grown on a silicon substrate. The breakdown behaviors for different source/drain contact schemes were investigated using Sentaurus simulation. The metal contact positions within the source and drain exhibited different piezoelectric effects and induced additional polarization charges for the 2DEG (two-dimensional electron gas). Due to the variation of source/drain contact schemes, electron density has changed the way to increase the electric field distribution, which in turn increased the breakdown voltage. The electric field distribution and 2DEG profiles were simulated to demonstrate that the piezoelectric effects at different metal contact positions considerably influence the breakdown voltage at different distances between drain metal contacts. When the contact position was far away from the AlGaN/GaN, the breakdown voltage of the nitrogen-implanted gated device decreased by 41% because of the relatively low electron density and weak induced piezoelectric effect. This reduction is significant for a 20 μm source-drain length. The minimum critical field used for the breakdown simulation was 4 MV/cm. The simulated AlGaN/GaN device exhibits different breakdown behaviors at different metal contact positions in the drain.
Keywords: 2DEG; AlGaN/GaN; HEMT; TCAD; metal.