Impact of in situ NH₃ pre-treatment of LPCVD SiN passivation on GaN HEMT performance

The impact on the performance of GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) of in situ ammonia (NH₃) pre-treatment prior to the deposition of silicon nitride (SiN) passivation with low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD ) is investigated. Three different NH₃ pre-treatment durations (0, 3, and 10 min) were compared in terms of interface properties and device performance. A reduction of oxygen (O) at the interface between SiN and epi-structure is detected by scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM )-electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) measurements in the sample subjected to 10 min of pre-treatment. The samples subjected to NH₃ pre-treatment show a reduced surface-related current dispersion of 9% (compared to 16% for the untreated sample), which is attributed to the reduction of O at the SiN/epi interface. Furthermore, NH₃ pre-treatment for 10 min significantly improves the current dispersion uniformity from 14.5% to 1.9%. The reduced trapping effects result in a high output power of 3.4 W mm⁻¹ at 3 GHz (compared to 2.6 W mm⁻¹ for the untreated sample). These results demonstrate that the in situ NH₃ pre-treatment before LPCVD of SiN passivation is critical and can effectively improves the large-signal microwave performance of GaN HEMTs.