Technical Insight
MOSHFET features the best of both worlds (Research Review)
GaN-based HFETs have become important in high-power microwave electronics due to the extremely high sheet carrier density and high mobility of the 2D-electron gas at the AlGaN/GaN heterointerface, which leads to record microwave power densities up to 9.8 W/mm2. A novel AlGaN/GaN metal-oxide-semiconductor HFET (MOSHFET) combines the advantages of the AlGaN/GaN heterointerface and a MOS device structure. G Simin and colleagues at the University of South Carolina, writing in Electronics Letters 36(24) p2043, describe a large-periphery multigate MOSHFET capable of switching high power densities of up to 7.5 kW/mm2. This new device features an on-state channel resistance as low as 75 m per mm2, which is two to three times less than that reported for buried-channel SiC FETs, and twenty-five to a hundred times less than the on-state channel resistance of SiC induced-channel MOSFET switches.
