Howard Mao

EEC 247
April 7, 2016
Overview of C-H surface diamond field effect transistors for high temperature
and high voltage operation
The paper introduces a new method of processing diamond field effect
transistors which seems superior to typical diamond FETs at both high
temperatures and room temperature.
Diamond FETs are typically doped p-type using boron, but in this paper
additional processing was performed to create bonds between carbon and
hydrogen in the channel (C-H bonds). The transistors were fabricated by
depositing diamond films lightly doped by boron onto type Ib diamond, oxidizing
the surfaces, depositing Au/Ti to make source and drain contacts and annealing
them, and then using a hydrogen plasma to make a C-H bonded surface.
Aluminum oxide was deposited using atomic later deposition to create a gate
oxide and to passivate the C-H surface. The final step was the creation of an
aluminum gate on top of the aluminum oxide.
Besides the C-H bonds in the FET, the device is unique in the use of
atomic layer deposition of aluminum oxide at a high temperature (450C). The
article mentions that this has been done before, but only up to about 200C,
because beyond that temperature the diamond films are destroyed and the C-H
bonds are broken, leading to a drop in conductivity. The deposition process that
the authors developed, involving alternately supplying trimethyl aluminum
(C6H18Al2) and water to the wafer, can be done at 450C and does not
compromise conductivity. Furthermore, they mention that the conductivity of CH FETs is independent of temperature in contrast to FETs doped with boron.
The rest of the paper gives performance metrics of the C-H FET. The
maximum drain current of the C-H FET at 400C of 30-45 mA was 10 times
higher than the maximum drain current seen in boron-doped FETs at the same
temperature. At room temperature the current of the latter FET shrunk to 1/50
of its original value due to the dopants not activating at room temperature while
the C-H FETs drain current actually increased by 20 to 30%. The transistor
shows a very low off-current at room temperature of about 10-7 mA/mm as well
as a high ratio of on current to off current (108). Both of these metrics get worse
at high temperatures. FETs with both channels that were not doped and
channels that were lightly-doped with boron were fabricated, and the off-current
of the FETs with undoped channels were over four orders of magnitude lower
than off-current of the lightly doped FETs. High breakdown voltages were
obtained with 200nm thick gate oxides, with a maximum of 606V when the gate
and drain were separated by 7m and many devices showing breakdown
voltages of over 500V with similar lengths. With gate oxides of 10nm,
breakdown voltages were on the order of 200 to 300V.
The article introduced an interesting new development in the fabrication
of diamond FETs which shows promise in improving various performance metrics
of these devices.