Abstract
Field-effect transistors made of wide-bandgap semiconductors can operate at high voltages, temperatures and frequencies with low energy losses, and are important for power and high-frequency electronics. However, wide-bandgap p-channel transistors perform poorly compared with n-channel ones, making complimentary circuits difficult to achieve. Hydrogen-terminated diamond is a potential p-type material for such devices, but surface transfer doping—thought to be required to generate conductivity—limits performance because it requires ionized surface acceptors that can lead to hole scattering. Here we show that p-channel wide-bandgap heterojunction field-effect transistors can be created, without surface transfer doping, using a hydrogen-terminated diamond channel and hexagonal boron nitride gate insulator. Despite having a reduced density of surface acceptors, the transistors have a low sheet resistance (1.4 kΩ) and large ON current (1,600 μm mA mm−1) compared with other p-channel wide-bandgap transistors, due to a high room-temperature Hall mobility (680 cm2 V−1 s−1). The transistors also exhibit normally OFF behaviour with an ON/OFF ratio of 108.
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Data availability
Source data are provided with this paper. All other data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Change history
07 February 2022
In the version of this article initially published, an extraneous minus sign appeared at the start of the y-axis label for Fig. 3d. The symbol has now been removed from the html and PDF versions of the article.
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Acknowledgements
We thank H. Osato, E. Watanabe, D. Tsuya, Y. Nishimiya and F. Uesugi for their technical support. We also thank J. Inoue for helpful discussions, and T. Ando, S. Koizumi, T. Teraji, Y. Wakayama and T. Nakayama for their support. This study was financially supported by JSPS KAKENHI (grant nos. JP19J12696 (Y.S.), JP19H05790 (K.W. and T.T.), JP20H00354 (K.W. and T.T.), JP19H02605 (Y.T.) and JP25287093 (Y.T.)); the Elemental Strategy Initiative (grant no. JPMXP0112101001 (K.W. and T.T.)); and the Nanotechnology Platform Project (Y.S. and Y.T.) of MEXT, Japan.
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Y.T. and Y.S. conceived the project. Y.S. fabricated the devices and performed the electrical characterizations. Y.S. and Y.T. performed the data analysis and modelling. T.K., M.I. and Y.T. assisted in fabricating the devices. K.W. and T.T. grew the hBN crystals. Y.S., T.U. and Y.T. wrote the manuscript. All the authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.
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Sasama, Y., Kageura, T., Imura, M. et al. High-mobility p-channel wide-bandgap transistors based on hydrogen-terminated diamond/hexagonal boron nitride heterostructures. Nat Electron 5, 37–44 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-021-00689-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-021-00689-4
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