GaN TRANSISTORS FOR POWER SWITCHING AND MILLIMETER-WAVE APPLICATIONS

Abstract

We review our state-of-the-art GaN -based device technologies for power switching at low frequencies and for future millimeter-wave communication systems. These two applications are emerging in addition to the power amplifiers at microwave frequencies which have been already commercialized for cellular base stations. Technical issues of the power switching GaN device include lowering the fabrication cost, normally-off operation and further increase of the breakdown voltages extracting full potential of GaN -based materials. We establish flat and crack-free epitaxial growth of GaN on Si which can reduce the chip cost. Our novel device structure called Gate Injection Transistor (GIT) achieves normally-off operation with high enough drain current utilizing conductivity modulation. Here we also present the world highest breakdown voltage of 10400V in AlGaN / GaN HFETs. In this paper, we also present high frequency GaN -based devices for millimeter-wave applications. Short-gate MIS-HFETs using in-situ SiN as gate insulators achieve high fmax up to 203GHz. Successful integration of low-loss microstrip lines with via-holes onto sapphire enables compact 3-stage K -band amplifier MMIC of which the small-signal gain is as high as 22dB at 26GHz. The presented devices are promising for the two future emerging applications demonstrating high enough potential of GaN -based transistors.