News from IMEC - January 2025

28.01.2025

In the ALL2GaN (Affordable smart GaN IC solutions for greener applications) project, we aim to advance the performance of industrial Gallium Nitride (GaN) devices and system-on-chip technologies operating at 100 V or less. The main component in the fabricated IC’s is p-GaN gate High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) power device. In Fig. 1(a) a X-sectional image of the p-GaN gate architecture of the device is depicted. With an optimization in the device fabrication imec Belgium has significantly reduced forward gate leakage, as shown in Fig. 1(b), comparing a transfer characteristic from the baseline device to the obtained improvement within ALL2GaN. The improvement in the gate characteristic, improves the gate robustness and reliability of the p-GaN gate HEMTs. Furthermore, Fig. 1(c) presents a good OFF-state gate and drain leakage of the fabricated devices. To showcase this technology further, power switches and integrated circuits (ICs) will be packaged and tested as part of the project.

(a)                                                                                                                         (b)                                                                            (c)

Fig. 1. (a) X-section p-GaN gate used in imec’s 100 V power HEMT devices, (b) Transfer characteristics and (c) OFF-state drain and gate current of baseline and improved p-GaN gate HEMTs.