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GaN-based solutions from KHz to THz

Umesh K. Mishra
Professor ECE Department UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA.93016
CTO, Transphorm, 115 Castilian Drive, Goleta, CA. 93117

device types. The AlGaN/GaN HEMT consists of an AlGaN

layer grown on a GaN channel to take advantage of the high
mobility (~2000 cm2/V.s) Two Dimensional Electron Gas
(2DEG) formed at the AlGaN/GaN interface as the current
carrying layer. A lateral device uses the distance between the
gate and the drain to achieve the breakdown voltage and
requires field plating methodologies to reduce the electric field
and associated trap-charging effects to achieve high
breakdown voltage without dispersion. The channel electrons
are modulated typically by a MIS gate to limit gate leakage. A
typical vertical device presented as a Current Aperture
Vertical Electron Transistor CAVET (see figure 1(b)) has
source and gate on the top and the drain at the bottom. The
current controlled by the gate, flows through the bulk of the
material into the drain through an aperture between current
blocking layers (CBL) typically achieved by either p type
doping of GaN layer or by isolation implantation. The
horizontal high mobility electron channel achieved by
AlGaN/GaN layer is used in conjunction with a thick GaN
drift region in order to achieve low Ron and high breakdown
voltage. Since vertical devices sustain the blocking voltage in
the vertical direction into the bulk material of the device, it
makes the chip area smaller for a specific current of operation
compared to the lateral design. The high electric field region
being buried in the bulk also alleviates current collapse due to
surface traps, eliminating or reducing extensive passivation
and field plating as required by the lateral designs.

Abstract Gallium Nitride-based electronics is providing

broad solutions from KHz to THz applications beyond what is
possible using conventional semiconductors such as Si, GaAs and
InGaAs. All these materials are operating at their materials
limits be it for power conversion or for mm-wave and sub mmwave applications. The AlGaN/GaN-based HEMT in N-polar
orientations and the Hot Electron Transistor (HET) are the
transistors that show great initial promise for ultra-high
frequency applications

I. INTRODUCTION

ower conversion and amplification are critical functions

enabling advances in electronics for communication,
computation and conservation.
. GaN-based devices,
promised, and have now delivered enhanced performance
beyond the Si roadmap in power conversion and are being
designed into applications previously dominated by
conventional compound semiconductors. The two enabling
properties for higher efficiency power conversion and
amplification at higher frequencies are the higher critical
electric field (Ec) due to the large bandgap of these materials
and the high electron mobility in the AlGaN/GaN
heterointerface. Ga-polar AlGaN/GaN HEMTs has been
developed and deployed for both power conversion (KHz to
MHz) and RF amplification to a frequency of 10GHz. For
efficient amplification N-polar GaN is being developed for
60GHz operation and higher. GaN-based HETs are being
targeted for THz applications.

II.

Gate

Gate

III-NITRIDE TRANSISTORS FOR POWER CONVERSION

Source

AlGaN

Drain

UID GaN
Insulating buffer
Foreign substrate (Si, SiC, Sapphire)

Power devices in GaN can be either lateral devices on SiC and

Si substrates or vertical devices preferably on Gallium Nitride
bulk substrates. Lateral devices are more mature and have
demonstrated great promise.Vertical GaN power devices are
attractive for high power applications when fabricated on bulk
GaN substrates for the power range shown in figure 1. In this
paper we will describe the performance and promise of the
AlGaN/GaN HEMT as the typical lateral device and the
Current Aperture Vertical Electron Transistor (CAVET) as the
typical vertical device. Figure XX shows a schematic of these

978-1-4799-4376-0/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE

Blocking voltage is held

Blocking
voltage
is held laterally
laterally
by depleting
the
2DEG
between
ource
between
the
sourcesand
drain
and drain in the off-state

Source

AlGaN

UID GaN
CBL
Drift region
Drain layer

Source
CBL

Drain
Blocking voltage is held
vertically by depleting the
Blocking voltage
isrheld
drift
egion vertically
between CBL
and dand
rain drain
layer iin
n the
ff-
between the source
theodrift
state

region

Figure
a) A lateral
AlGaN/GaN
power HEMT (b) Apower
vertical transistor
Figure
14 ((a)
A lateral
AlGaN/GaN
HEMTusing
(b) A vertical
AlGaN/GaN layer structure on bulk GaN drift layer and substrate
transistor using AlGaN/GaN layer structure on bulk GaN drift layer
and substrate

Lateral devices grown on Si are economically attractive and

are more mature and will be the focus of this paper.

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Fig. 2. The cascode normally off GaN HEMT allows for standard
Silicon based drive circuits while delivering the high voltage
performance of GaN devices
Fig. 3. I-V characteristics of TPH3006

The simplest embodiment of normally-off GaN transistors

incorporates a cascode approach at the packaged level. As
shown in Figure 2, a normally-off low-voltage Si FET is
connected to a normally-on high-voltage GaN HEMT in series
while the gate of the GaN HEMT is connected to the source of
the Si FET. This hybrid configuration produced an effective emode power device, safe in case of faulty gate control.
Moreover, it provides the compatibility with existing Si
drivers, as well as the freedom to optimize the GaN HEMTs
without the complication of special gate drive circuits.

The pulsed drain current is 70 A at a VG=8V and VD=10V.

The continuous (CW) drain current is 14A at a case
temperature of 25 oC (Figure 3) .

III. DC HEMT AND CASCODE HEMT PERFORMANCE

GaN epi-layers were grown on 4-6 SiC and Si substrates.
These epi films were developed to have a low defect density
(5x108-1x109) cm-2 on SiC and (2x109-1x1010) cm-2 on Si with
a high 2-DEG mobility and high charge density such that both
a high breakdown field and a low channel resistance are
achieved. Depletion mode GaN-based HEMTs were then
fabricated. The finished wafers were characterized with auto
probers of high current and high voltage capabilities. At
VD=600V, the room temperature drain leakage is as low as 1050nA and gate leakage is 3-15nA. At 150C, the typical drain
leakage increased to 1-10A and gate leakage is about 0.11A at 600V.

Figure 4. GaN Diode, Transistor and Module Products

The Ron ranges from 250 to 150 m based on device size.

Comparing to similarly-rated state-of-the-art Si super-junction
MOSFETs on the market, the GaN devices offer significant
reduction in gate charge, on-resistance and output capacitance.
The lateral GaN device in a TO-220 package also features the
Quiet-TabTM package scheme, with Gate-Source-Drain (GSD)
pin-out arrangement and the package base as a low-inductance
source terminal. This configuration allows 200% increase in
switching speed compared to traditional TO-220 packages,
which is necessary to take full advantage of the low switching
losses of GaN. The GaN diode has a Schottky barrier with a
forward voltage of 1.3V at 2-6 A current depending on size,
with no minority or reverse recovery charges. The packaged
devices are shown in Figure 4.

Dislocations do not significantly impact the leakage current

levels in otherwise well designed and optimally manufactured
lateral GaN devices. The typical DC on-resistance of a HEMT
is about 0.1-0.11 and the capacitance (Coss) is 40 pf . The
plastic-packaged GaN HEMT has a gate threshold of +2.1V
typical at 1mA drain current and the drain leakage is 10 A
typical at VG=0V and VD=600V. The increase of dynamic Ron
at 600V compared to its static value is usually 10-20% and the
dynamic on-resistance is 0.15 typical and 0.18 maximum
and is the resistance referred to in the data sheet.

As any well designed device with safety margin, our 600V

rated transistors have breakdown voltages in excess of
900Volts. We have also tested the robustness of these devices
against spikes, by intentionally subjecting them to 900V
spikes (1Million spikes) in a true switching environment. No
performance degradation is observed. While the present

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breakdown voltage is much lower than the inherent avalanche
capability of GaN material, the design margin available in our
devices guarantees against failure in appropriately designed
end user circuits and applications.

structure (schematic shown below in Fig 7a) enables the

2DEG to be readily contacted giving very low contact and onresistances; the back barrier provides a high output resistance
by mitigating substrate injection; the channel charge is
independently controlled by doping in the back barrier and
hence the channel can be aggressively scaled and the
breakdown can be enhanced with an AlGaN cap with a
polarization-induced negative field (not shown). The ultrascaled devices shown have a sheet resistance below 300
ohms/sq and a breakdown voltage of over 14V for a gate
length of 90nm. The fmax of the device shown (Lg = 60nm),
was over 400 GHz and the fT at the same bias was 167 GHz.
When biased for optimum fT the value was 204 GHz and an
fmax of 249 GHz (figure 8). Device and materials under
development promise to provide power density and efficiency
more than twice that currently possible with Ga-polar HEMTs
at 94 GHz.

(b)

(a)

Figure 5 (a) and (b) GaN solutions enable high frequency

(high density) operation of Boost/PFC with 70% loss
reduction over Silicon Super-junction.6:1 GaN modules with
integrated filter show enhanced electromechanical efficiency
by making motors more efficient using pure sinusoidal drive
signals

(a)

Fig 6a shows a 750-W, 230-400V boost converter with the

total-GaN solution (using both GaN HEMT & GaN diode)
which showed cleaner and faster waveforms as well as 33%
and 70% reductions of device losses at 100 and 500 kHz
respectively compared to a converter with the state-of-the-art
Si transistor and Si diode in the market. The high PWM
frequency allows integration of compact output filters with a
6-in-1 module resulting in a 3-phase pure-sine-wave inverter
for PV or motor drive application (Figure 6). An actual motor
operation test at 100-kHz PWM has revealed significant
electro-mechanical efficiency boost by the GaN inverter by
8%, 4% and 2% at low, mid and high load respectively,
compared to a state-of-the-art IGBT inverter at 16 kHz (Fig
5b) .

(c)

Fig. 7. (a) Schematic of the N-polar MIS-HEMT structure with high

aspect ratio T-gate. Output characteristics for an N-polar GaN HEMT
with 100-nm source-drain spacing and a 60-nm gate length (b) Ids >
4 A/mm (at Vgs = 1.5 V) and (c) 2.35 A/mm Idss (at Vgs = 0 V) and
0.232 -mm on-resistance (Vgs = 1.5 V) with excellent saturation and
pinch-off characteristics.

Figure 6 A compact filter is fitted on the same board as

the inverter to filter out the higher harmonics of the

Fig. 8. Small-signal RF gain of a 2x50 m device with Lg = 70

nm and fT = 204 GHz (fT*Lg = 14.3 GHz-m) and 2x12.5 m
device with Lg = 90 nm and fmax = 405 GHz. The fmax is higher
for the 2x12.5 m device as the gate resistance reduces with
decreasing gate width.

PWM signal
IV.

(b)

N-POLAR mm-WAVE TRANSISTORS

N-polar (Al,Ga,In)N/GaN transistors are providing the

pathway to simultaneously high gain and high breakdown at
mm-wave frequencies. The reasons are manifold. The inverted

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fmax of over 1.2THz and a breakdown voltage of 10V is
possible with an optimized III-N HET.

V. III-N HOT ELECTRON TRANSISTORS

The Hot Electron transistor operates by the injection of
electrons over a first barrier (emitter) into a thin region (base)
where they travel with minimal scattering and get collected
over a second barrier (collector) To enable ballistic transport
of electrons in the base, the base thickness is kept smaller than
the mean free path of electrons in the base material. Because
of device attributes such as ballistic transport and lowresistance n-type base, the HET has the potential of operating
at very high frequencies. The HET structure can also be used
as a spectroscopic tool to study high energy injection and
related effects in the material system The III-N system has the
benefit of high Ec values thus enabling the study of high
injection energies and high velocities. III-Nitrides also have a
large inter-valley separation (calculated to be 1.3-2.0 eV for
GaN), thus, higher injection energies can be used before the
onset of inter-valley scattering. In addition, polarization
charges in the III-N system can be engineered to obtain a highdensity and high-mobility 2DEG in the base, which can be
used to achieve high performance HETs.
Common-emitter transistor operation was demonstrated
recently in III-N HETs by using AlGaN (45%) and InGaN
(10%) polarization-dipole barriers as the emitter and collector
barriers respectively The maximum transfer ratio ( = IC/IE)
observed using this design methodology was ~ 0.3 (structure
shown in figure 9). The presence of a polarization induced
2DEG in the base was instrumental in achieving ohmic base
contacts and a low base sheet resistance of 1000/sq. for a
10nm base. The polarization-dipole HET design was shown to

VI. CONCLUSIONS
GaN-based materials and devices are just emerging from
research and development into product. Ga-polar HEMTS
have already been qualified and are being deployed in 4G base
stations and in military applications. First generation Ga-polar
based transistors are also proving to be far superior to Si-based
devices in certain applications such as half-bridege switches
where they can operate at high efficiency without the need for
reverse recovery diodes (Diode FreeTM). N-polar HEMTS are
emerging as the pathway for high efficiency solutions for VBand applications and beyond because of their low channel
resistance, high output resistance, scalability to ultra-high
aspect ratios and high breakdown along with high gain. Hot
Electron Transistors are very attractive for THz operation
because of the favorable high energy band structure in GaN
which allows launching the electrons at energies above 1V
without scattering into satellite valleys. Large conduction band
discontinuities in the GaN system enable low leakage The
ability to scale the device vertically while maintaining low
base resistance allows the potential of THz, high power
operation.
Acknowledgements:
The work presented here was supported by the ONR, DARPA
and ARPA-E. The author thanks Professors DenBaars, Speck
and Nakamura at UCSB for their collaborations. The research
results have been due to Dr Stacia Keller post-docs and
students at UCSB past and present. The work at Transphorm
was conducted by the Materials, Device Engineering, CTO
and Application Teams.

Fig.9. Layer structure of a III-N HET using

polarization-dipole barriers with ~ 0.3
simultaneously enable ohmic base contacts, low collector
leakage and common-emitter operation. III-N HET structures
with three base thicknesses of 8, 12, and 16nm were used to
extract the mean free path (Lb) of hot-electrons from an
exponential fit of the transfer ratio to the base thickness ( =
0 exp(-tb/Lb)), resulting in Lb ~ 8nm for hot-electrons in GaN.
The polarization-dipole HET design coupled with the
experimentally measured Lb should greatly help in advancing
future III-N HET technology. Initial estimates show that an

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