4H-silicon carbide mesfet with 2.8 W/mm rf power density

Abstract

Silicon carbide has tremendous potential for high power microwave devices because of its high breakdown electric field (4x106 V/cm), high thermal conductivity (4.9 W/cm-K), high saturated electron drift velocity ( 2 . 0 ~ 107 cm/sec) and low dielectric constant (10.0). The high velocity allows the devices to operate at relatively high frequencies despite the low mobility of S i c . The high breakdown field allows about ten times higher voltages to be applied for a given channel doping, which should allow a much higher output power density to be achieved than with Si or GaAsl . Submicron MESFETs have been previously fabricated in 6H-Sic and have shown desirable microwave performance with RF output powers of about 1 W/mm at 1-2 G H Z ~ ~ ~ . However, another polytype, 4H-SiC, shows even more potential for high power, high frequency operation, because its electron mobility (>550 cm2/V-sec) is about twice that of 6H-Sic. Thus we report the first DC, S-parameter, and output power results obtained with 4H-Sic MESFETs.