We investigated the electrical characteristics of an AlGaN/GaN heterostructure exposed to Ar plasma. In the near-surface region of the AlGaN/GaN heterostructure, we found that plasma-induced defects reduced the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) density and mobility at the AlGaN/GaN interfacewith increasing exposure time. The decrease in 2DEG density suggests that plasma-induced disordering partly extinguishes the piezo-polarization of the AlGaN layer, that the effective Schottky barrier height is increased by the introduction of negatively changed defects, or that the negatively charged defects induced during plasma exposure deactivate or compensate Si donors. In addition, we investigated the postannealing behavior of plasma-induced defects in the AlGaN/GaN heterostructure as well as in the n-GaN layer under an applied bias voltage. (c) 2013 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.