INTRINSIC CARRIER CONCENTRATION AND THE FUNDAMENTAL HIGH-TEMPERATURE OPERATING LIMIT OF WIDE-BANDGAP SEMICONDUCTORS
Keywords:
Keywords: wide-bandgap semiconductors; intrinsic carrier concentration; equilibrium statistics; high-temperature electronics; silicon carbide; gallium nitride.Abstract
Abstract. The replacement of silicon by wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductors
such as 4H-SiC and GaN is the central trend in modern power and high-temperature
electronics. Their advantage is governed by the equilibrium statistics of charge carriers:
a doped device operates correctly only while the thermally generated intrinsic
population n i remains far below the net doping. Using the classical nondegenerate
carrier statistics, we compute n i (T) and the intrinsic-onset temperature T i on a common
footing for Ge, Si, GaAs, 4H-SiC, and GaN with a temperature-dependent gap. At 300
K, n i spans about 23 orders of magnitude across the set, and T i (defined at a 10 16 cm
−3
doping level) rises almost linearly with the band gap, reaching about 1550–1590 K for
SiC and GaN versus 659 K for Si. The band gap is thus identified as the single dominant
lever setting the fundamental high-temperature ceiling of a semiconductor device.
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