Researchers studied how temperatures up to 500 degrees Celsius would affect electronic devices made from gallium nitride, a key step in their multiyear research effort to develop electronics that can operate in extremely hot environments, like the surface of Venus.
They studied the impact of temperature on the ohmic contacts in a gallium nitride device. Ohmic contacts are key components that connect a semiconductor device with the outside world. His co-authors include Qingyun Xie PhD ’24; Mengyang Yuan PhD ’22; EECS graduate students Patrick K. Darmawi-Iskandar and Pradyot Yadav; Gillian K. Micale, a graduate student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering; senior author Tomás Palacios, the Clarence J. LeBel Professor of EECS, director of the Microsystems Technology Laboratories, and a member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics; as well as collaborators Nitul S.
They added ohmic contacts to these devices using the two most common methods. The first involves depositing metal onto gallium nitride and heating it to 825 degrees Celsius for about 30 seconds, a process called annealing. At MIT, they conducted longer-term experiments by placing devices into a specialized furnace the group previously developed. They left devices inside for up to 72 hours to measure how resistance changes as a function of temperature and time.Microscopy experts at MIT.nano and the Technology Innovation Institute used state-of-the-art transmission electron microscopes to see how such high temperatures affect gallium nitride and the ohmic contacts at the atomic level.
The material did start to degrade after being in the furnace for 48 hours, but the researchers are already working to boost long-term performance. One strategy involves adding protective insulators to keep the material from being directly exposed to the high-temperature environment.Moving forward, the researchers plan to use what they learned in these experiments to develop high-temperature gallium nitride transistors.
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