Thermal management of FET devices using graphene heat spreader

Abstract

Self-heating is a severe problem in electronic devices since local heat generation and temperature rise limit the application of the devices. Here we demonstrate that thermal management of Field Effect Transistor (FET) devices can be substantially improved by introducing alternative heat-escaping channels implemented with graphene. Graphene is a good candidate for heat removal owing to its extremely high thermal conductivity. We simulated heat propagation in different GaAs FET circuits, namely metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET), metal semiconductor field effect transistor (MESFET) and heterostructure field effect transistor (HFET), without and with graphene lateral heat spreaders. We also simulated the devices with other heat spreaders and compared their performance with that of grapheme. Numerical solutions of the heat propagation equations were obtained using the finite element method. It was found that the incorporation of graphene or few-layer graphene (FLG) layers with proper heat sinks can substantially lower the temperature of the localized hot spots. The maximum temperature in the FETs was studied as function of graphene's thermal conductivity and the thickness of FLG. The developed model and obtained results are important to solve the thermal issues in FET devices.