600 V GaN vertical V-trench MOSFET with MBE regrown channel

GaN vertical power transistors have gained increasing interest in recent years due to the advantages over lateral transistors in high voltage/high current applications. To date, two major topologies have been studied most: gate-on-epi-surface (GoE) and gate-on-sidewall (GoS). The GoE devices include CAVET [1] and VDMOSFET-like transistors [2, 3]. The GoS devices include U-MOS or trench-MOSFETs with inversion channel [4, 5] or regrown AlGaN/GaN semi-polar channel [6], as well as depletion-mode MISFET [7]. The vertical MISFET is the simplest to fabricate, however, it does not have avalanche capabilities inherently besides being difficult to achieve sufficiently large V
_th
. It is easier for trench MOSFETs to achieve normally-off operation, high breakdown voltage (BV) and small footprint. However, it is challenging to achieve high mobility in the inversion channel. In contrast, CAVETs, VDMOS-like transistors and PolarMOS [3] utilize high mobility AlGaN/GaN channel to achieve low Ron, but the channel regrowth posts challenges in achieving low off-state leakage in un-gated regrowth interface. Recently, a novel design based on trench MOSFET is realized by MOCVD regrowth of a thin GaN interlayer [8]. Low Ron and high BV is achieved in the gated regrown channel. Similar to the other MOCVD regrown devices, the buried Mg-doped p-GaN needs to be re-activated by exposing the p-GaN surface during high temperature anneal. This leads to high thermal budget and poses limitations on device geometry. Furthermore, any incomplete activation of buried p-GaN leads to reduced BV. In this work, we design a V-shaped trench MOSFET with MBE regrown UID GaN channel. -600 V breakdown voltage with normally-off operation is demonstrated without the need for re-activation of the buried p-GaN. To our knowledge, this is the highest BV achieved in GaN vertical transistors with MBE regrown channel.