Low-temperature characteristics of the current gain of GaN/InGaN double-heterojunction bipolar transistors

We investigated the temperature dependence of the current gain of npn-type GaN/InGaN double-heterojunction bipolar transistors (DHBTs) in the low-temperature region. The current gain increased with decrease in device temperature due to the reduction of the recombination current in the p-type base layer. The current gain reached as high as 5000 at 40 K, which is the highest among nitride-based HBTs. For conventional HBTs made of InP or GaAs, the current gain decreased with decreasing device temperature. However, no reduction of the current gain was observed in this study, suggesting that the minority carrier mobility in the p-type InGaN base layer has negative temperature dependence, presumably because the ionized impurity scattering is relatively unaffected owing to the carrier freezeout and the high activation energy of Mg in the p-InGaN base layer.