Electro-thermal co-design of β-(AlxGa1-x)2O3/Ga2O3 modulation doped field effect transistors

Ultra-wide bandgap β-gallium oxide (Ga2O3) devices are of considerable interest with potential applications in both power electronics and radio frequency devices. However, current Ga2O3 device technologies are limited by the material's low intrinsic electron mobility and thermal conductivity. The former problem can be addressed by employing modulation-doped β-(AlxGa1−x)2O3/Ga2O3 heterostructures in the device architecture. In this work, (AlxGa1−x)2O3/Ga2O3 modulation-doped field effect transistors (MODFETs) have been investigated from a thermal perspective. Thermoreflectance thermal imaging was used to characterize the self-heating of the MODFETs. The (Al0.18Ga0.82)2O3 thermal conductivity (3.1–3.6 W/mK) was determined using a frequency domain thermoreflectance technique. Electro-thermal modeling was used to discern the effect of design parameters such as substrate orientation and channel length on the device self-heating behavior. Various thermal management schemes were evaluated using the electro-thermal device model. From an electro-thermal co-design perspective, the improvement in electrical performance followed by the mitigation of self-heating was also studied. For example, by employing a Ga2O3-on-SiC composite wafer, which was fabricated in this work, a 50% increase in power handling capability can be achieved as compared to a homoepitaxial device. Furthermore, flip-chip heterointegration and double-sided cooling approaches can lead to more than 2× improvement in the power handling capability. Using an augmented double-sided cooling design that includes nanocrystalline diamond passivation, a 5× improvement in the power handling capability can be accomplished, indicating the potential of the technology upon implementation of a suitable thermal management scheme.