Investigation of buffer traps in AlGaN/GaN-on-Si devices by thermally stimulated current spectroscopy and back-gating measurement

Thermally stimulated current (TSC) spectroscopy and high-voltage back-gating measurement are utilized to study GaN buffer traps specific to AlGaN/GaN lateral heterojunction structures grown on a low-resistivity Si substrate. Three dominating deep-level traps in GaN buffer with activation energies of ΔE_T1 ∼ 0.54 eV, ΔE_T2 ∼ 0.65 eV, and ΔE_T3 ∼ 0.75 eV are extracted from TSC spectroscopy in a vertical GaN-on-Si structure. High back-gate bias applied to the Si substrate could influence the drain current in an AlGaN/GaN-on-Si high-electron-mobility transistor in a way that cannot be explained with a simple field-effect model. By correlating the trap states identified in TSC with the back-gating measurement results, it is proposed that the ionization/deionization of both donor and acceptor traps are responsible for the generation of buffer space charges, which impose additional modulation to the 2DEG channel.