Operable GaN Devices

Abstract

A power supply circuit is described that includes a semiconductor body having a common substrate and a gallium nitride (GaN) based substrate. The GaN-based substrate includes one or more GaN devices adjacent to the front side of a common substrate. The common substrate is electrically coupled to nodes of the power circuit. Nodes of the power circuit are at a specific potential that is equal to or less than a potential at one or more load terminals of the one or more GaN devices.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to techniques and circuits related to semiconductor devices. Background technique [0002] Gallium nitride (GaN) can be used as a fabrication material for semiconductor devices. A significant advantage of GaN is that GaN has strain-induced piezoelectric charges, which allow conduction channels (eg, two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) regions) to be formed within GaN-based semiconductor devices without doping GaN. Eliminating the need to dope GaN can reduce the effect of impurity scattering in semiconductor devices, which allows intrinsic carrier mobility at low on-resistance (R DSON ) current conduction channels (for example, 2DEG regions). [0003] However, GaN may contain traps that trap or pull and hold mobile carriers within GaN due to the potentially large bandgap associated with GaN. These traps lead to an adverse effect known as current collapse associated with GaN-based semiconductor devices, such that the numbe...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

However, semiconductor devices that rely on the combination of a GaN substrate and a common substrate suffer from exceptionally high-speed trap

High-speed traps can render GaN-based semiconductor devices ineffective and useless as high electron mobility field-effect transistors (HEMTs)

For example, current collapse in a GaN-based semiconductor device can make the R of the GaN-based semiconductor device DSON increases by a factor of 100, and practically renders GaN semiconductor devices unusable for most HEMT applications

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