A high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT or HEM FET), also known as heterostructure FET (HFET) or modulation-doped FET (MODFET), is a field-effect transistor incorporating a junction between two materials with different band gaps (i.e. a heterojunction) as the channel instead of a doped region (as is generally the case for a MOSFET). A commonly used material combination is GaAs with AlGaAs, though there is wide variation, dependent on the application of the device. Devices incorporating more indium generally show better high-frequency performance, while in recent years, gallium nitride HEMTs have attracted attention due to their high-power performance. Like other FETs, HEMTs can be used in integrated circuits as digital on-off switches. FETs can also be used as amplifiers for large amounts of current using a small voltage as a control signal. Both of these uses are made possible by the FET's unique current–voltage characteristics. HEMT transistors are able to operate at higher frequencies than ordinary transistors, up to millimeter wave frequencies, and are used in high-frequency products such as cell phones, satellite television receivers, voltage converters, and radar equipment. They are widely used in satellite receivers, in low power amplifiers and in the defense industry.
Applications The applications of HEMTs include microwave and millimeter wave communications, imaging, radar, radio astronomy, and power switching. They are found in many types of equipment ranging from cellphones, power supply adapters and DBS receivers to radio astronomy and electronic warfare systems such as radar systems. Numerous companies worldwide develop, manufacture, and sell HEMT-based devices in the form of discrete transistors, as 'monolithic microwave integrated circuits' (MMICs), or within power switching integrated circuits. HEMTs are suitable for applications where high gain and low noise at high frequencies are required, as they have shown current gain to frequencies greater than 600 GHz and power gain to frequencies greater than 1THz. Gallium nitride based HEMTs are used as power switching transistors for voltage converter applications due to their low on-state resistances, low switching losses, and high breakdown strength. These gallium nitride enhanced voltage converter applications include AC adapters, which benefit from smaller package sizes due to the power circuitry requiring smaller passive electronic components. Gallium nitride HEMTs are also being developed for higher-power applications such as power inverters in electric vehicles.
History The invention of the high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) is usually attributed to physicist Takashi Mimura (三村 高志), while working at Fujitsu in Japan. The basis for the HEMT was the GaAs (gallium arsenide) MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor), which Mimura had been researching as an alternative to the standard silicon (Si) MOSFET since 1977. He conceived the HEMT in the spring of 1979, when he read about a modulated-doped heterojunction superlattice developed at Bell Labs in the United States, by Ray Dingle, Arthur Gossard and Horst Störmer who filed a patent in April 1978. Mimura filed a patent disclosure for a HEMT in August 1979, and then a patent later that year. The first device demonstrated by Mimura and Satoshi Hiyamizu in May 1980 was a D-HEMT that is normally on and applied negative voltage on gate results in depletion of the channel. Later that year they demonstrated the more practical E-HEMT operating in enhancement-mode, which is normally off and the channel under the gate is populated by positive gate voltage. Independently, Daniel Delagebeaudeuf and Tran Linh Nguyen, while working at Thomson-CSF in France, filed a patent for a similar type of field-effect transistor in March 1979. It also cites the Bell Labs patent as an influence. The first demonstration of an "inverted" HEMT was presented by Delagebeaudeuf and Nguyen in August 1980. One of the earliest mentions of a GaN-based HEMT is in the 1993 Applied Physics Letters article, by Khan et al. Later, in 2004, P.D. Ye and B. Yang et al demonstrated a GaN (gallium nitride) metal–oxide–semiconductor HEMT (MOS-HEMT). It used atomic layer deposition (ALD) aluminum oxide (Al2O3) film both as a gate dielectric and for surface passivation.
Operation Field effect transistors whose operation relies on the formation of a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) are known as HEMTs. In HEMTS electric current flows between a drain and source element via the 2DEG, which is located at the interface between two layers of differing band gaps, termed the heterojunction. Some examples of previously explored heterojunction layer compositions (heterostructures) for HEMTs include AlGaN/GaN, AlGaAs/GaAs, InGaAs/GaAs, and Si/SiGe.
Advantages The advantages of HEMTs over other transistor architectures, like the bipolar junction transistor and the MOSFET, are the higher operating temperatures, higher breakdown strengths, and lower specific on-state resistances, all in the case of GaN-based HEMTs compared to Si-based MOSFETs. Furthermore, InP-based HEMTs exhibit low noise performance and higher switching speeds.
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