XHEMTs on Ultrawide Bandgap Single‐Crystal AlN Substrates
Eungkyun Kim, Yu‐Hsin Chen, Naomi Pieczulewski, Jimy Encomendero, David A. Muller, Debdeep Jena, Huili Grace Xing
Abstract
ABSTRACT AlN has the largest bandgap in the wurtzite III‐nitride semiconductor family, making it an ideal barrier for a thin GaN channel to achieve strong carrier confinement in field‐effect transistors, analogous to silicon‐on‐insulator technology. Unlike /Si/, AlN/GaN/AlN can be grown fully epitaxially, enabling high carrier mobilities suitable for high‐frequency applications. However, developing these heterostructures and related devices has been hindered by challenges in strain management, polarization effects, defect control, and charge trapping. Here, the AlN single‐crystal high electron mobility transistor (XHEMT) is introduced, a new nitride transistor technology designed to address these issues. The XHEMT structure features a pseudomorphic GaN channel sandwiched between AlN layers, grown on single‐crystal AlN substrates. XHEMTs demonstrate RF performance on par with the state‐of‐the‐art GaN HEMTs, achieving 5.92 W/mm output power and 65% peak power‐added efficiency at 10 GHz under 17 V drain bias. These devices overcome several limitations present in conventional GaN HEMTs, which are grown on lattice‐mismatched foreign substrates that introduce undesirable dislocations and exacerbated thermal resistance. With the recent availability of 100‐mm AlN substrates and AlN's high thermal conductivity (340 W/), XHEMTs show strong potential for next‐generation RF electronics.