Session:

Power electronics technologies provide electrical energy conversion using semiconductor devices and passive components. The global power device market reaches US$40 billion and is rapidly expanding, driven by applications like electric vehicles, data centers, consumer electronics, electric grids, and renewable energy processing.

Power device advances are driven by materials and device architectures. In addition to using wide-bandgap (WBG) or ultrawide-bandgap (UWBG) materials, multidimensional architectures – such as superjunction, multi-channel, and multi-gate – can also improve device performance, regardless of the underlying material technology. These structures enable electrostatics engineering in additional dimensions and bring the benefits of geometrical scaling into power devices.

This talk presents our efforts in developing multidimensional power devices in WBG material GaN and UWBG material Ga₂O₃, the performance of which have exceeded the 1-D power device limit of the respective material. Particular focus will be placed on GaN power FinFETs, GaN multi-channel lateral devices, as well as the vertical GaN and Ga₂O₃ superjunction devices. These devices hold great potential for advancing the speed, efficiency, and form factor of power electronics systems, and some of them are currently being commercialized. The theoretical limits, figure of merits, and scaling laws of these multidimensional power devices will also be discussed for WBG and UWBG materials. Finally, these devices provide an exciting platform to study the fundamental material properties and carrier transports in homogenous or heterogenous, charge-balanced junctions under sub-micron second fast switching conditions.

Yuhao Zhang

Virginia Tech

Appearances