Towards ultralow-noise InP high electron mobility transistors: investigation of cryogenic microwave noise

Abstract: InP based HEMTs have become the dominant technology in microwave low noise amplifiers due to their outstanding low noise performance. State of art devices now reach around 3-5X the quantum noise limit in 1-100 GHz. Over the past three decades, the reduction in noise has primarily been achieved due to advancement of microfabrication techniques and transistor scaling. However, further improvement of the noise performance requires a physics-based understanding of the origin of microwave noise that is currently lacking.  In this talk, I will describe our efforts to identify the physical origin of drain noise in InP HEMTs using a cryogenic probe station. We find that the noise associated with the channel conductance can only account for a portion of the measured output noise. We hypothesize that the remaining noise is due to real-space transfer of electrons between the channel and barrier films.
[1] Gabritchidze et al, arXiv:2209.02858

Bio: Austin Minnich is Deputy Division Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science and a Professor in Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology. He received his Bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley in 2006 and his PhD from MIT in 2011, after which he started his position at Caltech. He has received a number of awards, including a 2013 NSF CAREER Award, a 2015 ONR Young Investigator Award, and a 2019 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).