Proton irradiation energy dependence of dc and rf characteristics on InAlN/GaN high electron mobility transistors

The effects of proton irradiation energy on dc and rf characteristics of InAlN/GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) were investigated. A fixed proton dose of 5 × 1015 cm−2 with 5, 10, and 15 MeV irradiation energies was used in this study. For the dc characteristics, degradation was observed for sheet resistance, transfer resistance, contact resistivity, saturation drain current, maximum transconductance, reverse-bias gate leakage current, and sub-threshold drain leakage current for all the irradiated HEMTs; however, the degree of the degradation was decreased as the irradiation energy increased. Similar trends were obtained for the rf performance of the devices, with ∼10% degradation of the unity gain cut-off frequency (fT) and maximum oscillation frequency ( fmax) for the HEMTs irradiated with 15 MeV protons but 30% for 5 MeV proton irradiation. The carrier removal rate was in the range 0.66–1.24 cm−1 over the range of proton energies investigated.