The 2018 GaN power electronics roadmap

Abstract

Gallium nitride (GaN) is a compound semiconductor that has tremendous potential to facilitate economic growth in a semiconductor industry that is silicon-based and currently faced with diminishing returns of performance versus cost of investment. At a material level, its high electric field strength and electron mobility have already shown tremendous potential for high frequency communications and photonic applications. Advances in growth on commercially viable large area substrates are now at the point where power conversion applications of GaN are at the cusp of commercialisation. The future for building on the work described here in ways driven by specific challenges emerging from entirely new markets and applications is very exciting. This collection of GaN technology developments is therefore not itself a road map but a valuable collection of global state-of-the-art GaN research that will inform the next phase of the technology as market driven requirements evolve. First generation production devices are igniting large new markets and applications that can only be achieved using the advantages of higher speed, low specific resistivity and low saturation switching transistors. Major investments are being made by industrial companies in a wide variety of markets exploring the use of the technology in new circuit topologies, packaging solutions and system architectures that are required to achieve and optimise the system advantages offered by GaN transistors. It is this momentum that will drive priorities for the next stages of device research gathered here.

Thermal Atomic Layer Deposition of Polycrystalline Gallium Nitride

“…12,14−16 However, the buffer layers, typically a few micron thick, can cause wafer bowing and breakage. 7 All of these keep the epitaxial GaN-on-Si technology still in a developing phase.…”

Annealing Behavior of Vacancy‐Type Defects in Mg‐ and H‐Implanted GaN Studied Using Monoenergetic Positron Beams

“…Gallium nitride (GaN) based power devices have attracted increased attention because of the potential of GaN for next generation power electronics . Power devices are required to operate at high voltages, high currents, and high‐power densities as well as high‐switching frequencies.…”

Electrical characteristics of vertical-geometry Schottky junction to magnetic insulator (Ga,Mn)N heteroepitaxially grown on sapphire

“…Besides becoming the material system of choice for nowadays optoelectronic [1] and high-power applications [2], GaN-based and related alloys and heterostructures are expected also to play a major role in the realization of spin-related functionalities based on semiconductors [3][4] [5]. While the search for a technology-viable nitride semiconductor exhibiting (ferro-)magnetic properties at room temperature is still the subject of active research, a great deal of knowledge on the underlying physical processes has been accumulated from the investigation of these system at their relevant temperatures [6][7] [8].…”