Thermal Properties of AlGaN/GaN HFETs on Bulk GaN Substrates

Micro-Raman thermography, microphotoluminescence spectroscopy, and thermal simulation were used to study the thermal properties of AlGaN/GaN heterostructure field-effect transistors grown on semi-insulating bulk GaN substrates. A bulk GaN thermal conductivity of 260 was determined from temperature measurements on operating devices in combination with finite-difference thermal simulations. This is significantly higher than typical thin GaN epilayer thermal conductivities, due to a lower dislocation density in bulk GaN. Despite the thermal conductivity of bulk GaN being lower than that of SiC, transistors on bulk GaN exhibited a similar thermal resistance as GaN-on-SiC devices, attributed to the absence of a thermal boundary resistance between the device epilayers and substrate for GaN-on-GaN devices.