Control of Ga-oxide interlayer growth and Ga diffusion in SiO/GaN stacks for high-quality GaN-based metal-oxide-semiconductor devices with improved gate dielectric reliability

Yamada, Takahiro*; Watanabe, Kenta*; Nozaki, Mikito*; Yamada, Hisashi*; Takahashi, Tokio*; Shimizu, Mitsuaki*; Yoshigoe, Akitaka ; Hosoi, Takuji*; Shimura, Takayoshi*; Watanabe, Heiji*

A simple and feasible method for fabricating high-quality and highly reliable GaN-based metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) devices was developed on the basis of systematic physical and electrical characterizations. Chemical vapor deposition of SiO films directly onto GaN substrates forming Ga-oxide interlayers was used to fabricate SiO/GaO/GaN stacked structures. Although well-behaved hysteresis-free GaN-MOS capacitors with extremely low interface state density below 10cmeV were obtained by post-deposition annealing, Ga diffusion into overlying SiO layers severely degraded the insulating property and dielectric breakdown characteristics of the MOS devices. However, this problem was found to be solved by employing rapid thermal processing, leading to superior performance of the GaN-MOS devices in terms of interface quality, insulating property and gate dielectric reliability.