ECE Departmental Seminar - Unlocking the Potential of Gallium Nitride Power Devices
Gallium nitride (GaN), with its wide energy gap and versatile heterojunctions, has gained major tractions in power electronics and RF applications. With attractive material properties such as high critical electric field and strong polarization effect, along with the adoption of low-cost scalable Si substrates and Si-compatible manufacturing processes, the GaN high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) technology platform offers compelling opportunities for further expansion from integration point of view. Meanwhile, numerous reliability issues need to be addressed for GaN to tap into the lucrative yet more demanding industrial and automotive applications. This talk intends to present some of the latest development in GaN power integration and reliability enhancement.
The development of GaN complementary MOS (CMOS) will also be discussed to illustrate the robustness and expansion capability of the GaN power device technology platform. By exploring the 3rd dimension of the planar GaN power devices, i.e., the space underneath the GaN epi-structures, a GaN/SiC hybrid field-effect transistor (HyFET) will be illustrated to harness the complementary merits of both GaN and SiC devices.
Prof. CHEN is currently a Chair Professor in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, also serves as the Director of Nanosystem Fabrication Facility (NFF) at the Clear Water Bay campus. He received his B.S. degree from Peking University, Beijing, China in 1988, and PhD degree from University of Maryland, College Park, USA in 1993. He has conducted research and development on GaAs and InP based high speed device technologies in NTT LSI Laboratories, Japan and Agilent Technologies, USA, before he joined HKUST in 2000.
At HKUST, he has led a group to develop technology and physical understanding of wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductors such as gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) for applications in power, high-frequency and harsh environment electronics . He has led inventions of many novel devices, for which more than 20 patents have been granted. He has trained more than 30 PhD students, many of whom are currently faculty members in academia and leaders in industry. Prof. Chen has more than 600 publications in international journals and conference proceedings. He is a Fellow of IEEE.