Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2011
Surface passivation for the devices is very important for ensuring the DC and RF performances as well as the reliability in pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistors (PHEMT's). We performed the comparative study on the DC, RF and noise characteristics of the 0.1 μm gate length PHEMT's passivated by low dielectric constant benzo-cyclo-butene (BCB) layers with those passivated by the conventional Si3N4 or the. The noise performance of the BCB passivation for the PHEMT's was much superior to that of the Si3N4, whereas the DC and other RF properties were not significantly affected by the passivation materials.