Effect of Trap Behavior on the Reliability Instability of Metamorphic Buffer in InAlAs/InGaAs MHEMT on GaAs

Our investigation focused on assessing the influence of the metamorphic buffer in metamorphic high-electron-mobility transistors (MHEMT) that were grown on GaAs substrates. While an MHEMT exhibited elevated off-state current levels, its direct current (DC) and radio frequency (RF) traits were found to be comparable to those of InP-based lattice-matched high-electron-mobility transistors (LM-HEMTs). However, the Pulsed I-V measurement results confirmed the presence of the fast transient charging effect, leading to a more substantial degradation in drain current observed in MHEMT. In addition, through the low-frequency noise characteristics, it was confirmed that the dominant trapping location was located in the bulk site. The slope of the 1/f noise measurement indicated that the primary trapping site was in proximity to the bulk traps. The carrier-number-fluctuation (CNF) model was employed to extract the bulk trap density (N_t). For the LM-HEMTs, the value was at 3.27 × 10¹⁶ eV^-1·cm^-3, while for the MHEMT, it was 3.56 × 10¹⁷ eV^-1·cm^-3.