Devices using ballistic transport of two dimensional electron gas in delta doped gallium arsenide high electron mobility transistor structures

In this thesis, devices using the ballistic transport of two dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in GaAs High Electron Mobility Transistor(HEMT) structure is fabricated and their dc and ac properties are characterized. This study gives insight on operation and applications of modern submicron devices with ever reduced gate length comparable to electron mean free path. The ballistic transport is achieved using both temporal and spatial limits in this thesis. In temporal limit, when frequency is higher than the scattering frequency (1/(2pitau)), ballistic transport can be achieved. At room temperature, generally the scattering frequency is around 500 GHz but at cryogenic temperature (≤4K) with high mobility GaAs HEMT structure, the frequency is much lower than 2 GHz. On this temporal ballistic transport regime, effect of contact impedance and different dc mobility on device operation is characterized with the ungated 2DEG of HEMT structure. In this ballistic regime, impedance and responsivity of plasma wave detector are investigated using the gated 2DEG of HEMT at different ac boundary conditions. Plasma wave is generated at asymmetric ac boundary conditions of HEMTs, where source is short to ground and drain is open while rf power is applied to gate. The wave velocity can be tuned by gate bias voltage and induced drain to source voltage(Vds ) shows the resonant peak at odd number of fundamental frequency. Quantitative power coupling to plasma wave detector leads to experimental characterization of resonant response of plasma wave detector as a function of frequency. Because plasma wave resonance is not limited by transit time, the physics learned in this study can be directly converted to room temperature terahertz detection by simply reducing gate length(Lgate) to submicron for the terahertz application such as non destructive test, bio medical analysis, homeland security, defense and space. In same HEMT structure, the dc and rf characterization on device is also carried out in order to compare the conventional HEMT and plasma wave detector. Additionally in spatial limit, the ballistic transport is achieved when gate length is shorter than mean free path of electron. Using depletion gates in GaAs/AlGaAs structure, we make quasi one dimensional channel (quantum point contact) at cryogenic temperature and investigate dc and ac(rf frequency) of 2DEG in spatial ballistic transport.