Event
RESCHEDULED to 2/19 - MSE Seminar Series: Travis Anderson
Friday, February 12, 2016
1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m.
Room 2110, Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Building
JoAnne Kagle
301-405-5240
jkagle@umd.edu
THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN POSTPONED TO FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19.
Travis Anderson
Naval Research Laboratory
GaN Device Challenges – Reliability, Thermal Management, and Vertical High Power Switches
As a wide bandgap semiconductor, the gallium nitride-based materials system is attractive for next-generation power devices, including RF amplifiers, high voltage power switches, and high breakdown voltage diodes. Such devices have a wide range of immediate Naval applications, such as high-power satellite communications and radar, unmanned underwater and aerial vehicles, ship drive components, and hybrid vehicle inverters. GaN devices have been commercially successful, evidenced by the development of light emitting diodes (LEDs) and monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) based on high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs), however, there are still significant device challenges as the material system is pushed to the fundamental performance limits. This seminar will present an overview of the GaN power device effort at NRL. This research has three primary focus areas – 1) study of failure physics related to radiation-induced degradation in HEMTs as an assessment of performance in extreme environments for space applications, 2) advanced device designs integrating nanocrystalline diamond heat spreading films for improved thermal management, and 3) address unique challenges associated with vertical device design and processing, including evaluation of epitaxial layers used for drift regions and p-type dopant implantation and activation for edge termination in power MOSFET structures.
