Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: The outstanding properties of Gallium Nitride (GaN) have enabled considerable improvements in the performance of power devices compared to traditional silicon technology, resulting in more efficient and highly compact power converters. GaN power technology has rapidly developed and is expected to gain a significant market share in an increasing number of applications in the coming years. However, despite the great progress, the performance of current GaN devices is still far from what the GaN material could potentially offer, and a significant reduction of the device on-resistance for a certain blocking voltage is needed. Conventional GaN high-electron-mobility-transistors are based on a single two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) channel, whose trade-off between electron mobility and carrier density limits the minimum achievable sheet resistance. To overcome such limitations, GaN power devices including multiple, vertically stacked 2DEG channels have recently been proposed, showing much-reduced resistances and excellent voltage blocking capabilities for a wide range of voltage classes from 1 to 10 kV. Such devices resulted in unprecedented high-power figures of merit and exceeded the SiC material limit, unveiling the full potential of lateral GaN power devices. This Letter reviews the recent progress of GaN multi-channel power devices and explores the promising perspective of the multi-channel platform for future power devices.
Source: Applied Physics Letters
DOI: 10.1063/5.0086978
Authors: Luca Nela, Ming Xiao, Yuhao Zhang, Elison Matioli
Institutions: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Virginia Tech
Language: English
Subfield: Condensed Matter Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Awards: G434337789, Research for GaN technologies, devices, packages and applications to address the challenges of the future GaN roadmap, G4701793695, CAREER: Nitride FinFET on Silicon for Medium-Voltage Monolithically Integrated Power Electronics, Collaborative Research: ECCS-EPSRC: Nitride Super-Junction HEMTs for Robust, Efficient, Fast Power Switching, G8874278720
OpenAlex ID: W4280522388