This STTR program is aimed to develop a novel very low resisitivity Ohmic contacts to n-AlGaN/GaN heterostructures, which are a building block of high power microwave high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs). Virtually all characteristics of high power transistors depend on the Ohmic contact resistance including: wall plug efficiency, heating of the device, reliability, noise figures of merit, ft, fmax, power added efficiency, and maximum power. The development of very low resisitivity contacts to n-AlGaN, has and enormous commercial potential by virtue of involvement of all major application areas of GaN based devices such as high power electronics, wireless communications and photonics. The major technical objective of Phase I is to demonstrate a new class of low resistance Ohmic contacts based on n-type AlxGa1-xN/AlyGa1-yN, which exhibit internal electric fields due to spontaneous and piezoleelctric polarization effects. BNT will optimize this novel contact technology. The optimized contacts will be employed in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs, which will be used in the next generation microwave amplifies for base stations. Cornell University will contribute state of the art techniques for fabricating HEMT test devices. Based on the success of the Phase I program, we will demonstrate in Phase II high performance AlGaN/GaN HEMTs. New contact technology can find its application in BJTs, HEMTs and HBTs for high power electornics, LEDs and laser diodes.
Keywords: Low Resistance Contacts , Gallium Nitride
