Molecular beam epitaxy for high-performance Ga-face GaN electron devices
Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) has emerged as a powerful technique for growing GaN-based high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) epistructures. Over the past decade, HEMT performance steadily improved, mainly through the optimization of device fabrication processes. Soon, HEMT performance will be limited by the crystalline quality of the epistructure. MBE offers heterostructure growth with highly abrupt interfaces, low point defect concentrations, and very low carbon and hydrogen impurity concentrations. Minimizing parasitic leakage pathways and resistances is essential in the growth of HEMTs for high-frequency and high-power applications. Through growth on native substrates with very low threading dislocation density, low-leakage HEMTs with very low on-resistance can be realized. Ga-rich plasma-assisted MBE (PAMBE) has been studied extensively, and it is clear that this technique has inherent limitations, including a high density of leakage pathways and a very small growth parameter space. Relatively new MBE growth techniques—high-temperature N-rich PAMBE and ammonia-based MBE—are being developed to circumvent the shortcomings of Ga-rich PAMBE.