GaN/SiC based High Electron Mobility Transistors for integrated microwave and power circuits

2 HEMT invention

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2015 marked the 35th anniversary of the High Electron Mobility Transistor invention. The HEMT represented a triumph for the, at the time, relatively new concept of bandgap engineering and nascent molecular beam epitaxy technology. The HEMT showcased the outstanding electron transport characteristics of two dimensional electron gas (2DEG) systems in III-V compound semiconductors.

Takashi Mimura presented the idea of high electron mobility transistor in 1979 as first on the world. He is working as Fellow at Fujitsu laboratories Ltd., of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication engineers (IEICE), Japan. Mimura and his colleges had problems with the growth and manufacturing of the device but in January 1980 they could obtain the characteristics of the world’s first HEMT transistor (Fig. 2.1). The team published their device in March of the same year, as a transistor, that could compete with the conventional GaAs MESFET in high frequency applications⁽¹⁾.

Fig. 2.1 Satoshi Hiyamizu (left), and Takashi Mimura (right) testing the first HEMT

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⁽¹⁾	Takashi Mimura, “The Early History of the High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT)”, IEEE Transactions on microwave theory and techniques, Vol. 50, No. 3, March 2002.