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Extreme Enhancement‐Mode Operation Accumulation Channel Hydrogen‐Terminated Diamond FETs with Vth < −6 V and High on‐Current

MetadataDetails
Publication Date2025-01-10
JournalAdvanced Electronic Materials
AuthorsChunlin Qu, Isha Maini, Qing Guo, Alastair Stacey, David A. J. Moran
InstitutionsUniversity of Glasgow, Princeton University
Citations3

Abstract In this work, a new Field Effect Transistor device concept based on hydrogen‐terminated diamond (H‐diamond) is demonstrated that operates in an Accumulation Channel rather than a Transfer Doping regime. The FET devices demonstrate both extreme enhancement‐mode operation and high on‐current with improved channel charge mobility compared to Transfer‐Doped equivalents. Electron‐beam evaporated Al 2 O 3 is used on H‐diamond to suppress the Transfer Doping mechanism and produce an extremely high ungated channel resistance. A high‐quality H‐diamond surface with an unpinned Fermi level is crucially achieved, allowing for the formation of a high‐density hole accumulation layer by gating the entire device channel which is encapsulated in dual‐stacks of Al 2 O 3 . Completed devices with gate/channel length of 1 µm demonstrate record threshold voltage < −6 V with on‐current > 80 mA mm −1 . Carrier density and mobility figures extracted by CV analysis indicate a high 2D charge density of ≈ 2 × 10 12 cm −2 and increased hole mobility of 110 cm 2 V −1 s −1 in comparison with more traditional Transfer‐Doped H‐diamond FETs. These results demonstrate the most negative threshold voltage yet reported for H‐diamond FETs and highlight a powerful new strategy to greatly improve carrier mobility and enable enhanced high power and high frequency diamond transistor performance.