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. 2023 Dec 23;15(1):0.
doi: 10.3390/mi15010033.

Comparison of Different Cooling Schemes for AlGaN/GaN High-Electron Mobility Transistors

Yunqian Song  1   2   3   4 , Chuan Chen  1   3 , Qidong Wang  1   3 , Jianyu Feng  1   2   3 , Rong Fu  1   3 , Xiaobin Zhang  1 , Liqiang Cao  1   2   3
Affiliations

Comparison of Different Cooling Schemes for AlGaN/GaN High-Electron Mobility Transistors

Yunqian Song et al. Micromachines (Basel). .

Abstract

Cooling is important for AlGaN/GaN high-electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) performance. In this paper, the advantages and disadvantages of the cooling performance of three cooling schemes: remote cooling (R-cool), near-chip cooling (NC-cool), and chip-embedded cooling (CE-cool) are compared. The influences of distinct geometric parameters and operating conditions on thermal resistance are investigated. The results show that the thermal resistances of NC-cool and CE-cool are almost the same as each other. Decreasing microchannel base thickness (hb) significantly increases the thermal resistance of CE-cool, and when its thickness is less than a critical value, NC-cool exhibits superior cooling performance than CE-cool. The critical thickness increases when decreasing the heat source pitch (Ph) and the convective heat transfer coefficient (hconv) or increasing the thermal conductivity of the substrate (λsub). Moreover, increasing Ph or λsub significantly improves the thermal resistance of three cooling schemes. Increasing hconv significantly decreases the thermal resistances of NC-cool and CE-cool while hardly affecting the thermal resistance of R-cool. The influence of the boundary thermal resistance (TBR) on the thermal resistance significantly increases at higher λsub and larger hconv.

Keywords: AlGaN/GaN HEMTs; chip-embedded cooling; hotspot; near-chip cooling; remote cooling.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Three cooling schemes for AlGaN/GaN HEMTs: (a) R-cool, (b) NC-cool, and (c) CE-cool.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Schematic cross-sectional diagram and thermal resistance modeling of three cooling schemes for AlGaN/GaN HEMTs: (a) the R-cool scheme, (b) the NC-cool scheme, and (c) the CE-cool scheme.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Three-dimensional simulation models. (a) Schematic cross-sectional diagram of the AlGaN/GaN HEMT device. (b) Top view of the AlGaN/GaN HEMT device. (c) The R-cool scheme. (d) The NC-cool scheme. (e) The CE-cool scheme.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Relationship between the number of grid cells and maximum temperature.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Thermal resistances of three cooling schemes and the ratio of thermal resistance for each material layer.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Vertical profile temperature distributions: (a) NC-cool and (b) CE-cool.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Temperature distributions on the surface of the buffer layer for the three cooling schemes.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Influences of different Ph values on thermal resistance.
Figure 9
Figure 9
The temperature distributions of different Ph on the surface of the buffer layer in the CE-cool scheme.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Thermal resistances under different substrates and the ratio of thermal resistance of each material layer in three cooling schemes.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Influences of hconv on thermal resistance with different substrates and cooling schemes.
Figure 12
Figure 12
(a) Influences of different TBR values on thermal resistance with a SiC substrate when hconv is 500 kW/m2·K. (b) Influences of different TBR values on thermal resistance with a Diamond substrate when hconv is 625 kW/m2·K.
Figure 13
Figure 13
(a) Influences of different Hb on thermal resistance. (b) Influence of Ph on the thermal resistance intersection. (c) Influence of hconv on the thermal resistance intersection. (d) Influence of the substrate material on the thermal resistance intersection.
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