We report on the high-voltage, noise, and radio frequency (RF) performances of aluminium gallium nitride/gallium nitride (AlGaN/GaN) on silicon carbide (SiC) devices without any GaN buffer. Such a GaN–SiC hybrid material was developed in order to improve thermal management and to reduce trapping effects. Fabricated Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) demonstrated an ideality factor n at approximately 1.7 and breakdown voltages (fields) up to 780 V (approximately 0.8 MV/cm). Hall measurements revealed a thermally stable electron density at N_2DEG = 1 × 10¹³ cm⁻² of two-dimensional electron gas in the range of 77–300 K, with mobilities μ = 1.7 × 10³ cm²/V∙s and μ = 1.0 × 10⁴ cm²/V∙s at 300 K and 77 K, respectively. The maximum drain current and the transconductance were demonstrated to be as high as 0.5 A/mm and 150 mS/mm, respectively, for the transistors with gate length L_G = 5 μm. Low-frequency noise measurements demonstrated an effective trap density below 10¹⁹ cm⁻³ eV⁻¹. RF analysis revealed f_T and f_max values up to 1.3 GHz and 6.7 GHz, respectively, demonstrating figures of merit f_T × L_G up to 6.7 GHz × µm. These data further confirm the high potential of a GaN–SiC hybrid material for the development of thin high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) and SBDs with improved thermal stability for high-frequency and high-power applications.

In this work, we investigated the self-heating effects of annealed Ti/Al/Ni/Au ohmic contacts and two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in AlGaN/GaN heterostructures under strong electric field by using the short pulse current–voltage and microwave noise measurement techniques. The experimental results demonstrated that the self-heating phenomena in ohmic contacts with the increase of current may dominate over the electrical performances of 2DEG channel. Moreover, the excess noise temperature of contact resistance was found to be more than four times higher than that of 2DEG channel at the same high current density values. The results reveal the importance of self-heating of the ohmic contacts on the device performance under short-duration (only 100 ns) and low-duty-cycle (only 10⁻⁵) pulse regime.

A quaternary lattice matched InAlGaN barrier layer with am indium content of 16.5 ± 0.2% and thickness of 9 nm was developed for high electron mobility transistor structures using the metalorganic chemical-vapor deposition method. The structural, morphological, optical and electrical properties of the layer were investigated planning realization of microwave power and terahertz plasmonic devices. The measured X-ray diffraction and modeled band diagram characteristics revealed the structural parameters of the grown In_0.165Al_0.775Ga_0.06N/Al_0.6Ga_0.4N/GaN heterostructure, explaining the origin of barrier photoluminescence peak position at 3.98 eV with the linewidth of 0.2 eV and the expected red-shift of 0.4 eV only. The thermally stable density of the two-dimension electron gas at the depth of 10.5 nm was experimentally confirmed to be 1.2 × 10¹³ cm⁻² (1.6 × 10¹³ cm⁻² in theory) with the low-field mobility values of 1590 cm²/(V·s) and 8830 cm²/(V·s) at the temperatures of 300 K and 77 K, respectively.

Pulsed hot-electron microwave noise measurements of the (Be)MgZnO/ZnO heterostructures are presented in this work. The heterostructures of different barrier thicknesses and different bulk electron densities in ZnO layer are compared. Capacitance–voltage (C–V) measurements reveal the decrease in the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) peak in electron density profile at the Zn-polar BeMgZnO/ZnO interface as the BeMgZnO barrier layer thickness decreases. For thin-barrier heterostructures, the peak disappears and only the bulk electron density is resolved in C–V measurements. The excess noise temperature at ∼10 GHz in thick-barrier heterostructures is noticeably higher (∼10 times) compared to thin-barrier heterostructures, which is attributed to the strong noise source in the contacts of the former. In the case of thin-barrier heterostructures, at electric fields above ∼10 kV/cm and electron density $\gtrsim 1\times {10}^{17}{\mathrm{cm}}^{-3}$, strong noise source is resolved, which was also observed earlier in the Ga-doped ZnO films due to the formation of self-supporting high-field domains. However, for the low electron densities (≲6 $\times {10}^{16}$ cm${}^{-3}$), the aforementioned noise source is not observed, which suggests the importance of a deep ZnO/GaN interface with 2DEG for power dissipation. The hot-electron temperature dependence on the dissipated power of those low-electron-density heterostructures is similar to that of O-polar ZnO/MgZnO. The estimated electron energy relaxation time in ZnO/MgZnO is ∼0.45 ps ± 0.05 ps at dissipated electrical power per electron of ∼0.1 nW/el and approaches ∼0.1 ps as the dissipated power is increased above ∼10 nW/el.