Wafer-scale Heterogeneous Integration of Monocrystalline \b{eta}-Ga2O3 Thin Films on SiC for Thermal Management by Ion-Cutting Technique

TL;DR

This paper presents a scalable method for heterogeneously integrating monocrystalline ta-Ga2O3 thin films on SiC substrates using ion-cutting, enhancing thermal management for power electronics by improving interface conductance and film thermal conductivity.

Contribution

It introduces a wafer-scale integration technique for ta-Ga2O3 on SiC with detailed thermal characterization and demonstrates improved thermal properties after annealing.

Findings

Thermal boundary conductance increases with thinner interlayers.

Annealing at 800°C more than doubles ta-Ga2O3 thermal conductivity.

Uniform bonding and exfoliation confirmed by minimal variation in thermal measurements.

Abstract

The ultra-wide bandgap, high breakdown electric field, and large-area affordable substrates make \b{eta}-Ga2O3 promising for applications of next-generation power electronics while its thermal conductivity is at least one order of magnitude lower than other wide/ultrawide bandgap semiconductors. To avoid the degradation of device performance and reliability induced by the localized Joule-heating, aggressive thermal management strategies are essential, especially for high-power high-frequency applications. This work reports a scalable thermal management strategy to heterogeneously integrate wafer-scale monocrystalline \b{eta}-Ga2O3 thin films on high thermal conductivity SiC substrates by ion-cutting technique. The thermal boundary conductance (TBC) of the \b{eta}-Ga2O3-SiC interfaces and thermal conductivity of the \b{eta}-Ga2O3 thin films were measured by Time-domain Thermoreflectance (TDTR) to evaluate the effects of interlayer thickness and thermal annealing. Materials characterizations were performed to understand the mechanisms of thermal transport in these structures. The results show that the \b{eta}-Ga2O3-SiC TBC values increase with decreasing interlayer thickness and the \b{eta}-Ga2O3 thermal conductivity increases more than twice after annealing at 800 oC due to the removal of implantation-induced strain in the films. A Callaway model is built to understand the measured thermal conductivity. Small spot-to-spot variations of both TBC and Ga2O3 thermal conductivity confirm the uniformity and high-quality of the bonding and exfoliation. Our work paves the way for thermal management of power electronics and \b{eta}-Ga2O3 related semiconductor devices.