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High-mobility p-channel wide-bandgap transistors based on hydrogen-terminated diamond/hexagonal boron nitride heterostructures

Nature Electronics volume 5, pages 37–44 (2022)Cite this article

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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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Fig. 1: Diamond FET with hBN gate insulator and graphite gate.
Fig. 2: Reduction in acceptor density on hydrogen-terminated diamond with no exposure to air.
Fig. 3: Electrical characteristics of diamond FET at room temperature.
Fig. 4: Temperature-dependent electrical characteristics of diamond FET.
Fig. 5: Comparison of room-temperature performances of diamond FET and earlier works.

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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.

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  • 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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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (WPI-MANA), National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Yosuke Sasama, Taisuke Kageura, Takashi Taniguchi, Takashi Uchihashi & Yamaguchi Takahide

  2. University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan

    Yosuke Sasama & Yamaguchi Takahide

  3. Research Center for Functional Materials, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Masataka Imura & Kenji Watanabe

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  1. Yosuke Sasama
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Contributions

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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Correspondence to Yamaguchi Takahide.

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Peer review information Nature Electronics thanks Nazareno Donato, Moshe Tordjman and Cui Yu for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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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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