High Thermal Boundary Conductance across Bonded Heterogeneous GaN—SiC Interfaces
Open accessAbstract
High-power GaN-based electronics are limited by high channel temperatures induced by self-heating, which degrades device performance and reliability. Increasing the thermal boundary conductance (TBC) between GaN and SiC will aid in the heat dissipation of GaN-on-SiC devices by taking advantage of the high thermal conductivity of SiC substrates. For the typical growth method, there are issues concerning the transition layer at the interface and low-quality GaN adjacent to the interface, which impedes heat flow. In this work, a room-temperature bonding method is used to bond high-quality GaN to SiC directly, which allows for the direct integration of high-quality GaN with SiC to create a high TBC interface. Time-domain thermoreflectance is used to measure the GaN thermal conductivity and GaN–SiC TBC. The measured GaN thermal conductivity is larger than that of grown GaN-on-SiC by molecular beam epitaxy. High TBC is observed for the bonded GaN–SiC interfaces, especially for the annealed interface (∼230 MW m –2 K –1, close to the highest value ever reported). Thus, this work provides the benefit of both a high TBC and higher GaN thermal conductivity, which will impact the GaN-device integration with substrates in which thermal dissipation always plays an important role. Additionally, simultaneous thermal and structural characterizations of heterogeneous bonded interfaces are performed to understand the structure–thermal property relation across this new type of interface.
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Thermal boundary resistance is a significant component of the overall thermal resistance in GaN-on-SiC, where AlN nucleation and defect layers elevate interface resistance.
“TBR is a significant component of the overall thermal resistance in GaN-on-SiC, where AlN nucleation and defect layers elevate interface resistance.”
From Thermal Management of Wide-Bandgap Power Semiconductors: Strategies and Challenges in SiC and GaN Power Devices (2025) · cites this paper as [39]
Surface-activated bonding enables high-quality interfaces and thermal boundary conductance values approaching 230 MW m-2 K-1.
“To mitigate TBR, surface-activated bonding (SAB) has emerged as a promising interface technology, enabling high-quality interfaces and thermal boundary conductance (TBC) values approaching 230 MW m -2 K -1 [1,2,39].”
From Thermal Management of Wide-Bandgap Power Semiconductors: Strategies and Challenges in SiC and GaN Power Devices (2025) · cites this paper as [39]
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- Authors
- Mu, F., Cheng, Z., Shi, J., Shin, S., Xu, B., Shiomi, J., Graham, S., & Suga, T.
- Affiliations
- Waseda University (JP)
- Georgia Institute of Technology (US)
- Meisei University (JP)
- The University of Tokyo (JP)
- Corresponding author
- Mu, Fengwen
- Graham, Samuel
- Venue
- ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
- Publisher
- American Chemical Society (ACS)
- Published
- 2019-08-13
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 36
- Pages
- 33428-33434
- ISSN
- 1944-8244 (ISSN-L)
- 1944-8252
- OpenAlex
- W2968088353
- Cited by
- 159
- References
- 33
- Citations by year
- 2026: 22 · 2025: 28 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 21 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 5.04
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- arxiv.org
- Licence
- Locations
- ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Funders
- Office of Naval Research (N00014-18-1-2429)
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (19K15298)
- Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan (R&D for Expansion of Radio Wave Resources)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Materials Chemistry › Thermal properties of materials
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Condensed Matter Physics › GaN-based semiconductor devices and materials
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Silicon Carbide Semiconductor Technologies
- Keywords
- thermal boundary conductance, GaN, SiC, GaN-on-SiC, room-temperature bonding, heat dissipation, self-heating, annealing, interface structure, high-power electronics, time-domain thermoreflectance
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