Effect of tunnel injection through the Schottky gate on the static and noise behavior of GaInAs/AlInAs high electron mobility transitor

Abstract

By using a Monte Carlo simulator, the influence of the tunnel injection through the Schottky contact at the gate electrode of a GaInAs/AlInAs High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) has been studied in terms of the static and noise performance. The method used to characterize the quantum tunnel current has been the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) approach. The possibility of taking into account the influence of the image charge effect in the potential barrier height has been included as well. Regarding the static behavior, tunnel injection leads to a decrease in the drain current ID due to an enhancement of the potential barrier controlling the carrier transport through the channel. However, the pinch-off is degraded due to the tunneling current. Regarding the noise behavior, since the fluctuations in the potential barrier height caused by the tunnelinjected electrons are strongly coupled with the drain current fluctuations, a significant increase in the drain-current noise takes place, even when the tunnel effect is hardly noticeable in the static I-V characteristics, fact that must be taken into account when designing scaled HEMT for low-noise applications. In addition, tunnel injection leads to the appearance of full shot noise in the gate current.