Trench formation and corner rounding in vertical GaN power devices

Trench formation and corner rounding are the key processes to demonstrate high-voltage trenchbased vertical GaN devices. In this work, we developed a damage-free corner rounding technology combining Tetramethylammonium hydroxide wet etching and piranha clean. By optimizing the inductively coupled pl...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Liu, Zhihong, Gao, Xiang, Zhang, Yuhao, Sun, Min, Piedra, Daniel, Hu, Jie, Palacios, Tomas
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Institute of Physics (AIP) 2018
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/116060
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2849-5653
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4858-8264
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8104-9097
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2190-563X
Description
Summary:Trench formation and corner rounding are the key processes to demonstrate high-voltage trenchbased vertical GaN devices. In this work, we developed a damage-free corner rounding technology combining Tetramethylammonium hydroxide wet etching and piranha clean. By optimizing the inductively coupled plasma dry etching conditions and applying the rounding technology, two main trench shapes were demonstrated: flat-bottom rounded trench and tapered-bottom rounded trench. TCAD simulations were then performed to investigate the impact of trench shapes and round corners on device blocking capability. GaN trench metal-insulator-semiconductor barrier Schottky rectifiers with different trench shapes were fabricated and characterized. A breakdown voltage over 500V was obtained in the device with flat-bottom rounded trenches, compared to 350V in the device with tapered-bottom rounded trenches and 150V in the device with nonrounded trenches. Both experimental and simulation results support the use of rounded flat-bottom trenches to fabricate high-voltage GaN trench-based power devices.