The improvement of ohmic contact of Ti/Al/Ni/Au to AlGaN/GaN HEMT by multi-step annealing method

A multi-step rapid thermal annealing process of Ti/Al/Ni/Au was investigated for ohmic contact of AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT). The samples were studied by Transmission Line Model (TLM), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) measurements. By the multi-step annealing process, the specific contact resistance was decreased from 10−5 Ω cm2 level to 4–3 × 10−6 Ω cm2 and the surface morphology was improved. The AES measurements showed that the limitation indiffusion of Au and outdiffusion of Al were account for the surface morphology improvement and the surface Fermi level towards the conduction-band edge resulted in a lower specific contact resistance.