Nanotechnology Applications in Electron Devices

Recently, wide-bandgap and high-mobility III–V semiconductors having significant transport advantages are used extensively in the research field as alternative channel materials for upcoming highly scaled devices. Wide-bandgap Gallium Nitride (GaN) materials assure significant performance enhancements compared to silicon-based devices, due to the inbuilt polarization effects near the heterostructure junctions with a high 2DEG carrier density, possessing high mobility. The GaN-based devices have the potential to operate at very high voltages, high operating frequencies, high temperatures, and high power densities and thus are very attractive for designing the future electronic systems. Further, these devices can be classified as AlGaN/GaN- and InAlN/GaN-based HEMT and MOS-HEMT devices, which individually have immense applications for future high-power, mixed-signal RF and sensing applications and optoelectronics applications. This chapter broadly summarizes the current landscape where these technologies are headed, with an introduction of the GaN-based devices, their basic fabrication steps, their principle of operations, and future aspects of these devices.