Description
Date depot: 20 janvier 2022
Titre: Conception of GaN-IC chip using MOS-High-Electron-Mobility-Transistor (MOS-HEMT) for smart management power system and energetic optimization of electronic system
Directeur de thèse:
Lionel TROJMAN (LISITE)
Domaine scientifique: Sciences pour l'ingénieur
Thématique CNRS : Systèmes et architectures intégrés matériel-logiciel
Resumé: The latest results in scaling technology demonstrated in the last decades that energy consumption became critical. Increase of electronic components in electrical device have led to question foundations of the performance limit in many applications: from the smartphone to the datacenter. This thinking has been connected to environmental considerations in term of wasting resources energy and finally joined a global perspective that a change of paradigm on the technology and energy consumption duality. In this perspective it has been targeted energy resource that are not suitable for this change of paradigm such as the fossil energy and therefore any technological object using this energy should be re-think. Today the electric cars are an important market competing directly the gasoil car. Following this paradigm change many devices using electrical energy is composed of a smart power electronic management unit that enable an optimized energy use relying on reducing at best the wasting energy during operation. More generally, the field of electronic as power converter or power electronic become a niche technology to develop primordial application to resolve this paradigm change. As a first approach have been to common CMOS technology to provide smart power management and leave the Thyristor or IGBT discreet component circuit for the conversion. But with the recent requirements as aggressive power consumption restriction in high voltage conversion but also system form factor with high temperature operation conditions led to use integrated component have been explored. The most important material which have been introduced in this technology development have been the SiC. Schottky Barrier Diode (SBD), Thyristor and then MOSFET were commercialized during the last decade. The material quality has always been a lock for technology development. Since the SiC has reached certain limit in process fabrication, engineers have also explored other materials. Recently GaN-on-Si (or GoS) material have emerged to fill the gap for the low voltage performance. Interestingly the material quality of the GaN have carried on positively and today become a direct competitor of the SiC for the medium-voltage application. The (Ron,VBD) resulting from the GaN show indeed superiority in performance and GaN-based SBD and HEMT for 3kV are in development using SOI wafer.
For now, the GaN material have reach a good enough maturity to be considered for integrated circuit fabrication for power electronic system implementation. Couple of years ago Imec have released the very first PDK for GaN technology. Hence, the field of GaN-IC need a lot of development in the range of the medium-to-high voltage application and great endeavors are expected to answer the question that reduction of waste energy resource and the best optimization for any electrical application with the GaN.
The present doctoral proposal general objectives:
1. Establish the different physics mechanism related to n-GaN and p-GaN MOS-HEMT
2. Implement a GaN-IC microchip for a smart power management system
To reach these objectives the candidate will have to follow the following research activities:
a. Build a physic model using the TCAD sentaurus
b. To develop basic analog circuit operating with small signals such as amplifiers and large signal such as converters or gate drivers.
c. Explore the possibility to integrate logic gates with MOS-HEMT using only n-GaN channel and if possible, using p-GaN devices
d. To development of a GaN-IC that integrate on the same GoS area a chip integrating different function for power conversion including a power management unit relying on logic gate.
Doctorant.e: Pozo Viera Nataly