This paper focuses on how to reduce the gate leakage current caused by plasma dry etching. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy （XPS） is employed to measure the AlGaN surface before and after etching. N vacancies are introduced, which cause that gate currents are not dominated by the thermal electron emission mechanism. N vacancies enhance the tunneling effect and reduce the Schottky barrier height as n-type doped in the etched AIGaN surface.A post-gate process for AlGaN/GaN HEMTs,annealing at 400℃ in a nitrogen ambient for 10min is introduced. After annealing, Ni atoms of gate metal reacted with Ga atoms of AlGaN, and N vacancies were reduced. The reverse leakage decreased by three orders of magnitude,the forward turn-on voltage increased and the ideality factor reduced from 3.07 to 2.08.
