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Two guidance schemes (i) fuel-optimal (ii) energy-optimal to realize soft landing at a desired location on the moon are developed using the optimal control laws. The optimal control laws are obtained by solving a two-point boundary value problem formulated based on Pontryagin’s principle. The guidance laws, adapted from the optimal control laws, are obtained as a function of unknown co-state variables. Differential Transformation (DT) technique is employed to determine the unknown co-states at each time instant of landing trajectory using the information on the current vehicle state, target landing site (loaded on-board apriori) and the time-to-go. The numerical integration of co-state dynamics is avoided due to the DT based approach. The time-to-go, a critical parameter for any guidance scheme, is computed and updated real time using a simple strategy which uses the current and end states. The simple strategy for time-to-go works well even when the shape of the trajectory is nonlinear. Extensive analysis is carried out to evaluate and compare the proposed guidance schemes. Further, the proposed schemes are compared with other popular guidance schemes. The DT based proposed schemes help quantify the landing masses for fuel-optimal and energy-optimal objectives. Other features of the proposed schemes are that they do not assume constant gravity field and independent of reference trajectory.

This article reports on the experimental and analytical determination of the optimum carbon concentration in GaN to achieve enhanced breakdown in AlGaN/GaN high-electron mobility transistors (HEMTs). The lateral breakdown voltage increases when carbon doping is increased from $3\times 10^{{18}}$ to 1019 cm−3 beyond which it decreases, whereas there is no substantial enhancement in the vertical breakdown voltage with carbon doping. We invoke carrier statistics in a compensated semiconductor vis-a-vis the formation energy of carbon-occupying Ga (or N) vacancies to explain the observed buffer leakage. Temperature-dependent data indicate that the buffer leakage current is due to hopping transport, the activation energy of which yields the positions of the defect states within the bandgap. The increase in buffer leakage beyond optimum C concentration is attributed to the formation of shallow donor traps by carbon atoms occupying Ga vacancies (CGa). The observations correlated with the relative intensities of the defect-mediated peaks in the cathodoluminescence (CL) data of the samples. Based on our findings, a C doping beyond 1019 cm−3 is not recommended for GaN buffers in order to achieve high breakdown voltages.

We report on the characterization of the interfaces of Al2O3/InAlN/GaN HEMT structure grown on 200 mm diameter silicon using conductance dispersion technique. Irreversible threshold voltage (VTH) shift of up to +similar to 2.5 V was observed due to the gate stress induced activation of acceptor states. Further, frequency dependent VTH shift during capacitance voltage measurements were also recorded due to the presence of slow traps at InAlN/GaN interface. The conductance dispersion indicated the presence of acceptor traps of the order of similar to 4 x 10(12) to 7 x 10(13) cm(-2) eV(-1) with a time constant of similar to 10 to 350 ls at the InAlN/GaN interface. Trap density at the Al2O3/InAlN was found to be in similar range but with a time constant of similar to 2 ms. The presence of high density of traps at InAlN/GaN interface is attributed to the unavoidable growth interruption before the start of InAlN growth. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Limiting buffer layer current leakage is essential for the realization of high breakdown fields in GaN-on-Si high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs). In this report, we demonstrate the importance of controlling the surface morphology of the AlN nucleation layer (NL) in limiting this leakage. Testing on a self-consistent series of samples grown under two different AlN NL conditions revealed the presence of leakage paths within the epilayers grown using a single temperature AlN NL owing to the presence of surface pits. The introduction of a higher temperature AlN in the NL drastically reduced the pit density and led to a large reduction (>103) in the lateral and vertical buffer leakage in HEMT structures. Using conductive atomic force microscopy, secondary ion mass spectroscopy, and temperature-dependent carrier transport measurements, we confirm that these pits—which originate in the AlN NL, thread vertically, and propagate into the device structures—are associated with leakage paths, thus reducing the field that can be dropped across the epilayers. This is explained by invoking preferential oxygen segregation at their side-facets. It is shown that when a pit-free surface is maintained, a vertical field of 1.6 MV/cm can be achieved for HEMTs. This study is expected to benefit the development of high-performance GaN HEMTs in moving toward the theoretical breakdown field of III-nitrides.

Leakage mediated by GaN buffer traps is identified and studied using a novel characterization technique. Through back-gating measurement, the effect of buffer trap states on the lateral leakage is determined by probing mesa-isolated Ohmic pads. Time-dependent leakage measurements are carried out to study the extent of the increase in buffer leakage due to the traps. It is observed that the mesa leakage is more prominent at very slow sweep rates and high substrate bias. The temperature-dependent measurements show that the mesa leakage and the substrate leakage are characterized by thermionic emission from the traps with an activation barrier of 0.34 and 0.2 eV, respectively.

Use of low work function metal to lower the contact resistance on unpinned MIS contacts is presented. Through TCAD simulations and experimental data, it is established that conducting interfacial layers along with low work function metals like Ytterbium instead of Titanium for MIS contacts results in lower contact resistivity as well as an improvement in ION in ultra-scaled 14 nm Germanium-on-Insulator (GOI) n-channel FinFET devices. The benefit is larger for resistance-limited scaled FinFETs at the 10 and 7 nm nodes. Mixed-mode TCAD simulation of a self-loaded inverter circuit is used to demonstrate an improvement in overall energy-delay performance.

This work demonstrates the benefit of a lower contact barrier height, and hence reduced contact resistivity (rho(c)), using a low work-function metal (Yb) in unpinned metal-interfacial layer-semiconductor (MIS) contacts on n-type Ge. Fermi-level unpinning in MIS contacts on n-Ge is first established by introducing a 2 nm TiO2-x interfacial layer between various contact metals (Yb, Ti, Ni, Pt) and n-Ge. Further, Yb/TiO2,/n-Ge MIS contact diodes exhibit higher current densities (up to 100s