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Thermal Management Modeling for β-Ga2O3-Highly Thermal Conductive Substrates Heterostructures

MetadataDetails
Publication Date2022-03-08
JournalIEEE Transactions on Components Packaging and Manufacturing Technology
AuthorsWang Guang, Yanguang Zhou
InstitutionsHong Kong University of Science and Technology, University of Hong Kong
Citations27

The ultrawide-bandgap (UWBG) (∼4.8 eV) semiconductor β-gallium oxide (β-Ga2O3) gives promise to the next generation of high-power electrical devices owing to its high-power conversion efficiency and current handling capability. However, the self-heating issue caused by the low thermal conductivity of β-Ga2O3 has largely limited the development of these β-Ga2O3-based high-power electronics. Engineering the thermal transport properties through forming highly thermal conductive β-Ga2O3-based heterostructures and then improving the corresponding heat dissipation ability may circumvent the low thermal conductivity of β-Ga2O3. Here, we systematically integrate β-Ga2O3 with several highly thermal conductive substrates (HTCSs), e.g., AlN (∼319 W/m K), 4H-SiC (∼370 W/m K), and diamond (∼2200 W/m K), and investigate the heat dissipation performance of the β-Ga2O3- HTCS heterostructures by finite element modeling (FEM). The influence of the interfacial thermal conductance (ITC) between β-Ga2O3 and HTCSs, the thickness of β-Ga2O3, and the applied power density on the thermal dissipation capabilities of the β-Ga2O3-HTCS heterostructures are also discussed. Our results show that, for a heterostructure with 100-nm β-Ga2O3 and 100-μm HTCSs, the maximum temperature can be decreased from 1860 to 1153 K for AlN HTCS when the interfacial thermal boundary conductance is changed from 10 to 310 MW/m2 K under a power 10.1 GW/m2. And a large temperature drop from 1668 to 1031 K is obtained if we change the thickness of β-Ga2O3 from 1010 to 10 nm as for the β-Ga2O3-AlN heterostructure. Besides, the applied power change from 0.1 to 10.1 GW/m2 can bring a temperature change from 306 to 1110 K. The safety operating region of the corresponding heterostructures considering the interfacial thermal boundary conductance, the thickness of β-Ga2O3, and the applied power, i.e., the temperature is lower than 575 K, is then suggested. Our results here propose a new thermal management strategy via forming β-Ga2O3-HTCS heterostructures to overcome the self-heating issue in β-Ga2O3-based high-power electronics.

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