Proton-irradiated InAlN/GaN high electron mobility transistors at 5, 10, and 15 MeV energies

InAlN/GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) grown on SiC substrates were subjected to 5-15 MeV high energy protons with a fixed 5 × 10 ¹⁵cm ^-2 fluence. The saturation currents and gate leakage currents of all the proton-irradiated InAlN/GaN HEMTs were degraded. Proton irradiation at lower energy was found to degrade the direct current (DC) current-voltage (I-V) characteristics more severely than higher-energy irradiation, because the energy loss component of the lower energy protons was larger than those of higher-energy protons in the vicinity of the 2-dimensional electron gas conducting channel. Our experimental results were consistent with stopping and range of ions in matter simulation results of the energy deposition profile by the protons.