Power electronics will get a prominent role in the 61st annual IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) at the Washington D.C. Hilton Hotel running from December 7-9. The conference is considered the world’s premier forum for scientists and engineers in the field of micro and nanoelectronics.
“The IEDM conference has been the place where breakthroughs that drive the electronics industry forward are unveiled,” said Mariko Takayanagi, IEDM 2015 Publicity Chair and Senior Manager at Toshiba. “For example, at the IEDM in 1975 Intel’s Gordon Moore gave a talk that refined his earlier prediction of transistor scaling into what has since become known as Moore’s Law. This year the focus is on devices intended to support the Internet of Things and other emerging areas of importance that depend upon advances in semiconductor technology.”
In power electronics, one IEDM paper deals with better GaN HEMTs for high-power amplifiers. High electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) made from GaN are thought to have great potential for use in high-power millimeter-wave amplifiers for high-data-rate wireless networks. Normally these transistors use an InAlN barrier layer to separate the channel from the source and drain. At IEDM, a team led by Fujitsu will show that InAlN is inadequate for devices intended for use in high-power amplifier applications because the material facilitates “current collapse,” where a collection of electron traps arises and alters the device’s performance.
Instead, the researchers used a higher-quality barrier material, InAlGaN. They also employed a novel double-layer SiN passivation technique. The 80-nm-channel-length InAlGaN/GaN power HEMTs they built demonstrated a record 3 W/mm output power density at 96 GHz, a 60% improvement over the best results reported to date. They also report a superb reliability. The power and reliability performance put the HEMTs at the state-of-the-art for use in W-band amplifiers (75–110 GHz).
The work is described in Paper 9.1, Collapse-Free High Power InAlGaN/GaN-HEMT with 3 W/mm at 96 GHz; from K. Makiyama et al, Fujitsu/Tokyo Institute of Technology. Other papers at IEDM that cover topics in power include one on a GaNFET compact model for linking device physics, another on high-voltage circuit design and technology optimization, a next-generation CMOS-compatible GaN-on-Si transistor for high-efficiency energy systems, an invited paper on the renovation of power devices, a discussion of state-of-the-art GaN vertical power devices, and many more.
For registration and other information, the IEDM 2015 home page is www.ieee-iedm.org, or contact Phyllis Mahoney, Conference Manager, telephone (301) 527-0900 ext. 2.
Filed Under: Power Electronic Tips