(Invited, Digital Presentation) Thermal Conductance across Heterogeneously Integrated Interfaces for Thermal Management of Wide and Ultra-Wide Bandgap Electronics

Abstract

Thermal management is important for wide and ultra-wide bandgap power electronics because overheating degrades device reliability and performance. High thermal conductivity substrates such as SiC and diamond facilitate heat dissipation of these devices while the thermal boundary resistance between devices and substrates accounts for a large portion of the total thermal resistance, which prevents devices from taking the full advantage of the high thermal conductivity of the substrates. Recently, heterogeneously integrated wide and ultra-wide bandgap semiconductor interfaces are found to have low thermal boundary resistances, which provides a new degree of freedom to design and fabricate thermally conductive interfaces for thermal management of related power devices. For example, GaN can be bonded with single crystal SiC or single crystal diamond directly at room temperature. β-Ga2O3 can be bonded with SiC with or without Al2O3 interfacial layers. Compared with growth, the bonded interfaces are not limited by lattice mismatch. Moreover, the room-temperature bonding process discussed in this talk can possibly eliminate the effects of thermal stress existed in high temperature growth or bonding techniques. Recent progresses in this sub-area will be discussed in this talk, especially thermal conductance across surface-activated bonded GaN and β-Ga2O3 interfaces measured by time-domain thermoreflectance (TDTR) and the effects of thermal boundary resistance values on device temperatures. Finally, the potential challenges will also be pointed out, for instance, high-throughput thermal measurements of buried interfaces, thermal property-structure relations of interfaces bonded under different conditions, theoretical understanding of interfacial thermal transport, and device demonstrations.