Thickness dependent thermal conductivity of gallium nitride

As the size of gallium nitride (GaN) transistors is reduced in order to reach higher operating frequencies, heat dissipation becomes the critical bottleneck in device performance and longevity. Despite the importance of characterizing the physics governing the thermal transport in thin GaN films, the literature is far from conclusive. In this letter, we report measurements of thermal conductivity in a GaN film with thickness ranging from 15–1000 nm grown on 4H-SiC without a transition layer. Additionally, we measure the thermal conductivity in the GaN film when it is 1 μm-thick in the temperature range of 300 < T< 600 K and use a phonon transport model to explain the thermal conductivity in this film.