Since the early demonstration of 2D-electron gas [M. A. Khan et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 60, 3027 (1992)] and a heterojunction field effect transistor (HFET) [M. Asif Khan et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 63, 1214 (1993)] in III–N materials, rapid progress has been made to improve the DC and RF performance of GaN–AlGaN based HFETs. Stable and impressive microwave powers as high as 4–8 W/mm have been reported for device operation frequencies from 10 to 35 GHz. The key reason for these high performance numbers is an extremely large sheet carrier densities (>1 × 1013 cm−2) that can be induced at the interfaces in III–N hetereojunction [A. Bykhovsk et al., J. Appl. Phys. 74, 6734 (1993); M. Asif Khan et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 75, 2806 (1999)]. These are instrumental in screening the channel dislocations thereby retaining large room temperature carrier mobilities (>1500 cm2/Vs) and sheet resistance as low as 300 Ω/sq. These numbers and the high breakdown voltages of the large bandgap III–N material system thus enable rf-power approximately 5–10 times of that possible with GaAs and other competitor's technologies. We have recently introduced a unique pulsed atomic layer epitaxy approach to deposit AlN buffer layers and AlN/AlGaN superlattices [J. Zhang et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 79, 925 (2001); J. P. Zhang et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 80, 3542 (2002)] to manage strain and decrease the dislocation densities in high Al-content III–N layers. This has enabled us to significantly improve GaN/AlGaN hetereojunctions and the device isolation. The resulting low defect layers are not only key to improving the electronic but also deep ultraviolet light-emitting diode devices. For deep UV LED's they enabled us to obtain peak optical powers as high as 10 mW and 3 mW for wavelengths as short as 320 nm and 278 nm. Building on our past work [M. Asif Khan et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 77, 1339 (2000); X. Hu et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 79, 2832 (2001)] we have now deposited high quality SiO2/Si3N4 films over AlGaN with low interface state densities. They have then been used to demonstrate III–N insulating gate transistors (MOSHFET (SiO2) and MISHFET (Si3N4) with gate leakage currents 4–6 order less than those for conventional GaN–AlGaN HFETs. The introduction of the thin insulator layers (less then 100 A) under the gate increases the threshold voltage by 2–3 V. In addition, it reduces the peak transconductance gm. However the unity cut-off frequency, the gain and the rf-powers remain unaffected as the gm/Cgs (gate-source capacitance) ratio remains unchanged. In addition to managing the defects and gate leakage currents we have also employed InGaN channel double heterojunction structures (AlInGaN–InGaN–GaN) to confine the carriers thereby reducing the spillover into trappings states. These InGaN based MOS-DHFETs exhibited no current-collapse, extremely low gate leakage currents (<10−10 A/mm) and 10–26 GHz rf-powers in excess of 6 W/mm. We have also demonstrated the scalability and stable operation of our new and innovative InGaN based insulating gate heterojunction field effect transistor approach. In this paper we will review the III–N heterojunction field-effect transistors progress and pioneering innovations including the excellent work from several research groups around the world. (© 2003 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)