Research of Gallium Nitride as Next-Generation Semiconductor

Abstract

In today’s society, semiconductors have become an indispensable material in people’s lives, as they are closely related to daily needs such as internet access, power supply, and computing. The most widely used semiconductor material currently is silicon. Its cost advantage in the early stage made other semiconductor materials lag far behind. As semiconductor manufacturing has progressed to nanoscale and even 3-nanometer technology, problems with silicon semiconductors have become increasingly apparent. As the size of silicon transistors continues to shrink, quantum tunneling effects such as leakage current and gate leakage current have caused power consumption to increase continuously. Moreover, the silicon manufacturing process requires harsh conditions such as high vacuum, high temperature, and multiple steps, which increases the production cost and process complexity. Therefore, people have pinned their hopes on the next-generation semiconductor material, gallium nitride (GaN), as an alternative to silicon. Given its superior properties such as wider bandgap, higher electron mobility, and better thermal conductivity, gallium nitride (GaN) offers promising solutions to overcome the limitations of silicon-based semiconductors.