Phonon black-body radiation limit for heat dissipation in electronics

Thermal dissipation at the active region of electronic devices is a fundamental process of considerable importance. Inadequate heat dissipation can lead to prohibitively large temperature rises that degrade performance and intensive efforts are under way to mitigate this self-heating. At room temperature, thermal resistance is due to scattering, often by defects and interfaces in the active region, that impedes the transport of phonons. Here, we demonstrate that heat dissipation in widely used cryogenic electronic devices instead occurs by phonon black-body radiation with the complete absence of scattering, leading to large self-heating at cryogenic temperatures and setting a key limit on the noise floor. Our result has important implications for the many fields that require ultralow-noise electronic devices

Voltage controlled sub-THz detection with gated planar asymmetric nanochannels

[EN]This letter reports on room temperature sub-THz detection using self-switching diodes based on an AlGaN/GaN heterostructure on a Si substrate. By means of free-space measurements at 300 GHz, we demonstrate that the responsivity and noise equivalent power (NEP) of sub-THz detectors based on planar asymmetric nanochannels can be improved and voltage controlled by means of a top gate electrode. A simple quasi-static model based on the DC measurements of the current-voltage curves is able to predict the role of the gate bias in its performance. The best values of voltage responsivity and NEP are achieved when the gate bias approaches the threshold voltage, around 600 V/W and 50 pW/Hz1/2, respectively. A good agreement is found between modeled results and those obtained from RF measurements under probes at low frequency (900MHz) and in free-space at 300 GHz

Non-linear thermal resistance model for the simulation of high power GaN-based devices

[EN]We report on the modeling of self-heating in GaN-based devices. While a constant thermal resistance is able to account for the self-heating effects at low power, the decrease of the thermal conductance of semiconductors when the lattice temperature increases, makes necessary the use of temperature dependent thermal resistance models. Moreover, in order to correctly account for the steep increase of the thermal resistance of GaN devices at high temperature, where commonly used models fail, we propose a non-linear model which, included in an electro-thermal Monte Carlo simulator, is able to reproduce the strongly non-linear behavior of the thermal resistance observed in experiments at high DC power levels. The accuracy of the proposed non-linear thermal resistance model has been confirmed by means of the comparison with pulsed and DC measurements made in devices specifically fabricated on doped GaN, able to reach DC power levels above 150 W mm−1 at biases below 30 V.NRF2017-NRFANR003 GaNGUN project, the Spanish MINECO and FEDER through project TEC2017-83910-R and the Junta de Castilla y León and FEDER through project SA254P18

Monte Carlo analysis of the influence of surface charges on GaN asymmetric nanochannels: bias and temperature dependence

International audienceIn this paper, the occupancy of sidewall surface states having a clear signature in the performance of AlGaN/GaN-based self-switching diodes (SSDs) is analyzed using a semi-classical Monte Carlo (MC) simulator in a wide temperature ( T) range, from 100 to 300 K. Experimental I- V curves show an unusual current decrease at low temperature attributed to surface trapping. The dependence on T of the negative surface charge density sigma at the etched sidewalls of the SSDs is essential to explain the measurements. Two devices with different widths (80 and 150 nm) have been characterized and simulated in detail paying especial attention to the modeling of the surface states. At room temperature, MC simulations with a position-independent value of sigma are able to qualitatively reproduce the I- V curves. However, a more complex approach is required to correctly replicate the values and shape of the DC experimental curves at low temperature, below 220 K. An algorithm where sigma depends not only on T but also on the applied bias V is proposed to successfully fit the current values at every bias point. The model is able to explain the physics of the unexpected dependence of the resistance with the channel width and the sign change in the bowing coefficient, the parameters that govern the detection capabilities of the diodes