Normally-off HfO2-gated diamond field effect transistors

A normally-off hydrogenated-diamond (H-diamond) field effect transistor (FET) using a HfO2 gate oxide is demonstrated. The HfO2 gate oxide has a bilayer structure which is fabricated by a sputter-deposition (SD) technique on a thin buffer layer prepared by an atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique. The role of the ALD-HfO2 is found to prevent deterioration of the H-diamond surface by the SD process. The leakage current density of the SD-HfO2/ALD-HfO2/H-diamond structure is smaller than 1.1 × 10−4 A cm−2 at gate voltages from −9.0 to 2.0 V. The capacitance-voltage characteristic shows that fixed and trapped charge densities are low enough to operate the FET. The HfO2-gated FET has p-type channel and complete normally-off characteristics. The drain-source current maximum, threshold voltage, extrinsic transconductance maximum, and effective mobility of the FET with gate length of 4 μm are −37.6 mA mm−1, −1.3 ± 0.1 V, 11.2 ± 0.1 mS mm−1, and 38.7 ± 0.5 cm2 V−1 s−1, respectively.