Room and low temperature study of common emitter current gain in AlGaN/GaN heterojunction bipolar transistors

Author

Huang, J.J. ; Caruth, D. ; Feng, M. ; Lambert, D.J.H. ; Shelton, B.S. ; Wong, M.M. ; Chowdhury, U. ; Zhu, T.G. ; Keon, H.K. ; Dupuis, R.D.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Illinois Univ., Urbana, IL, USA

Volume

37

Issue

6

fYear

2001

fDate

3/15/2001 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

393

Lastpage

395

Abstract

Increased collector current and common emitter (CE) current gain at lower temperature in AlGaN/GaN heterojunction bipolar transistors is reported. For the same base current I_B=15 μA and biased voltage V_CE=50 V, the collector current increases from I_C=169 μA (β=11) at 295 K to I_c=411 μA (β=27) at 190 K. This increase in the collector current and CE gain at lower temperature can be attributed to the reduced base recombination current, which is due to the carrier traps associated with dislocation centres in the base-emitter junction

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; aluminium compounds; cryogenic electronics; electron traps; electron-hole recombination; gallium compounds; heterojunction bipolar transistors; semiconductor device measurement; wide band gap semiconductors; 15 muA; 169 to 411 muA; 190 to 295 K; 50 V; AlGaN-GaN; AlGaN/GaN heterojunction bipolar transistors; base recombination current; base-emitter junction; biased voltage; carrier traps; collector current; common emitter current gain; dislocation centres; low temperature; room temperature;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electronics Letters

Publisher

iet

ISSN

0013-5194

Type

jour

DOI

10.1049/el:20010263

Filename

918371