Buffer-less Gallium Nitride High Electron Mobility Heterostructures on Silicon

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a buffer-less GaN growth on silicon using MOVPE, achieving low thermal resistance and high electron mobility, which could revolutionize nitride HEMT devices and applications.

Contribution

It introduces a buffer-less GaN growth method on silicon, reducing thermal resistance and maintaining high-quality heterostructures without traditional thick buffers.

Findings

Achieved a thermal resistance of 11(±4) m^2K/GW, significantly lower than conventional methods.

Produced high-mobility 2DEG with over 2000 cm^2/(V·s) at room temperature.

Observed quantum oscillations indicating high-quality electron systems.

Abstract

Thick metamorphic buffers are perceived to be indispensable for the heteroepitaxial integration of III-V semiconductors on silicon substrates with large thermal expansion and lattice mismatches. However, III-nitride buffers in conventional GaN-on-Si high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) heterostructures impose a substantial thermal resistance, throttling heat extraction, which reduces device efficiency and lifetime. Herein, bypassing the buffer, we demonstrate the direct growth of GaN after the AlN nucleation layer on silicon by metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE). By varying reactor pressure, we modulate the growth stress in the submicron epilayers and realise threading dislocation densities similar to that in thick buffered structures. We achieve a GaN-to-substrate thermal resistance of (11(+/-)4) ((m^2)K(GW^-1)), an order of magnitude reduction over conventional designs on silicon and one of the lowest on any non-native substrate. AlGaN/AlN/GaN heterojunctions on this platform show a characteristic 2D electron gas (2DEG), the room-temperature Hall-effect mobility of which, at over 2000 (cm^2/(V-s)), rivals the best-reported values. The low-temperature magnetoresistance of this 2DEG shows clear Shubnikov-de-Haas oscillations, a quantum lifetime > 0.180 ps, and tell-tale signatures of spin-splitting. These results may establish a new paradigm for nitride HEMTs, potentially accelerating applications from energy-efficient transistors to fundamental investigations on electron dynamics in this 2D wide-bandgap system.