Direct Bonding of GaAs and Diamond for High Power Device Applications
Authors: Liang Jianbo , Nakamura Yuji , Ohno Yutaka , Shimizu Yasuo , Zhan Tianzhuo , Watanabe Takanobu , Kamiuchi Naoto , Nagai Yasuyoshi , Shigekawa Naoteru 
Published: December 2020

Direct bonding of GaAs and diamond was successfully achieved by surface activated bonding (SAB) method at room temperature. The structures of GaAs/diamond interface before and after annealing at 400 ℃ were investigated by transmission electron microscope (TEM). A 3-nm-thick crystal defect layer was formed at the bonding interface, the change in the crystal defect layer thickness was not observed after annealing. There were no nanovoids and micro-cracks observed at the interface with annealing at temperature 400 ℃. These results indicated that the GaAs/diamond interface has high thermal stability and can withstand the temperature rise of power devices during operating.

GaAs-based power devices have excellent electron transport properties and make it suitable for high frequency operation at high frequency. The output power and the lifetime of GaAs devices are largely degraded by the temperature rise of the active region during operating. The thermal conductivity of GaAs is very small, so that the generated heat by self-heating cannot be sufficiently dissipated through the substrate. Diamond has the highest thermal conductivity among materials and is an ideal material to suppress the temperature rise of the devices. The integration of the GaAs-based devices and diamond will be a more promising approach for improving the heat dissipation ability of the devices. However, since there is a large mismatch between the thermal expansion coefficients and lattice constants of GaAs and diamond, the direct growth of GaAs on diamond is quite difficult and vice versa. We have achieved the direct bonding of diamond and Si at room temperature using surface activated bonding (SAB) method and obtained the excellent thermal stability bonding interface.1-3 In this study, we examine the structures of the diamond/GaAs bonding interface and effects of thermal annealing on the interfacial structure of the interface by transmission electron microscopy (TEM).

GaAs epitaxial layer grown on GaAs substrate was bonded to diamond by SAB method at room temperature. GaAs epitaxial substrate was composed of a 200 nm thick GaAs and a 100 nm thick InGaP layers grown on GaAs. After bonding, the GaAs substrate and InGaP layer were removed by mechanical polishing and selective wet etching to obtain 200 nm thick GaAs layer bonded to diamond substrates. The structures of the GaAs/diamond bonding interface were investigated by TEM observation. The TEM samples were fabricated by using a focused ion beam (FIB) technique.

The cross-sectional TEM images of the GaAs/diamond bonding interface without and with annealing at 400°C for 5 min are shown in Fig 1(a) and 1(b), respectively. A crystal defect layer with a thickness of about 3 nm was observed in the as-bonded interface. The thickness of the crystal defect layer did not change, but no voids or cracks were observed at the bonding interface after annealing. These results indicate that the bonding interface of diamond and GaAs has an excellent thermal stability, which is extremely qualified for the heat dissipation of the devices.

Acknowledgements This work was partly supported by Hirose International Scholarship Foundation. The fabrication of the TEM samples and part of the TEM observations were respectively performed at The Oarai Center and at the Laboratory of Alpha-Ray Emitters in IMR under the Inter-University Cooperative Research in IMR of Tohoku University (NO. 18M0045 and 19M0037).

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Figure 1