High-Performance Nitride Transistor

Problem: Current methods to fabricate normally-off devices are vulnerable to gate leakage and poor electron transport due to the ultra thin barrier requirement and/or the degraded performance due to fluorine atom contamination or RIE induced damage. Technology: These inventions relate to a new kind of normally-off nitride-based transistor GaN-spacer MOSFET which combines high conductivity in the access regions of the transistor with an enhancement-mode intrinsic transistor. The new normally-off dual-gate GaN transistors are based on the idea of combining a normally-off transistor with low breakdown voltage, with a high breakdown voltage normally-on GaN HEMTs. The GaN HEMT can be either AlGaN/GaN HEMT or AlInN/GaN HEMT, or any other nitride-based device. It should be noted that this invention can also be used for Si, diamond and SiC-based power transistors as it is independent of the specific semiconductor material used. Christopher Noble crn@mit.edu