Potential of Diamond for Applications in Microelectronics

摘要

Diamond provides the highest figures of merit for any semiconductor materials foruse in high power, high speed and high temperature device applications. However, fabrication of diamond devices is difficult and the devices made so far have shown rather poor performance. In the report the authors present a comprehensive review of the potential of diamond materials for various applications in microelectronics. Especially, by using a 2D-semiconductor device simulator the authors try to get a realistic view of the performance limits of diamond power devices, which could be fabricated by using the existing diamond and semiconductor technologies. The authors show that there are many unexpected difficulties in the design of optimum diamond power devices. The authors also present a summary of the diamond devices, which already have been fabricated in various laboratories. A conclusion drawn from these experimental and theoretical results and considerations is that simple figures of merit estimations give too optimistic a picture of the advantages in diamond power devices. Commercial level diamond devices seem to be available only far in the future. Instead of using diamond as an active material in semiconductor devices, a more straightforward application in microelectronics can be found in using diamond as a heat sink in the packaging technique of devices. Therefore the authors also review the progress obtained so far in these passive applications of diamond films.