A novel 4H-SiC MESFET with ultrahigh upper gate

A novel 4H-SiC metal semiconductor field effect transistor with ultrahigh upper gate (UU-MESFET) by depletion layer variation and electric field modulation is proposed in this paper for the first time. The prominent merits in the proposed structure are the smaller gate depletion layer and the higher electric field peak produced by the electric field modulation due to ultrahigh upper gate. A higher electric field peak is introduced by ultrahigh upper gate at lower gate corner instead of upper gate corner, which leads to electric field breakdown. Using ISE simulation, the breakdown voltage of the UU-MESFET is improved by 55% and the drain saturation current is increased by 15% than those of the conventional DR-MESFET, which means that the UU-MESFET has an improvement of about 78% in the maximum output power density compared to the DR-MESFET. Furthermore, the gate-source capacitance of the proposed structure is about 17% smaller than that of the DR-MESFET. Therefore the proposed structure has fantastic DC performance and in the meanwhile possesses better RF characteristics.