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β-phase gallium oxide ( β-Ga2O3) has drawn significant attention due to its large critical electric field strength and the availability of low-cost high-quality melt-grown substrates. Both aspects are advantages over gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) based power switching devices. However, because of the poor thermal conductivity of β-Ga2O3, device-level thermal management is critical to avoid performance degradation and component failure due to overheating. In addition, for high-frequency operation, the low thermal diffusivity of β-Ga2O3 results in a long thermal time constant, which hinders the use of previously developed thermal solutions for devices based on relatively high thermal conductivity materials (e.g., GaN transistors). This work investigates a double-side diamond-cooled β-Ga2O3 device architecture and provides guidelines to maximize the device’s thermal performance under both direct current (dc) and high-frequency switching operation. Under high-frequency operation, the use of a β-Ga2O3 composite substrate (bottom-side cooling) must be augmented by a diamond passivation overlayer (top-side cooling) because of the low thermal diffusivity of β-Ga2O3. 

In this study, we compared the transient self-heating behavior of a homoepitaxial β-Ga2O3 MOSFET and a GaN-on-Si HEMT using nanoparticle-assisted Raman thermometry and thermoreflectance thermal imaging. The effectiveness of bottom-side and double-side cooling schemes using a polycrystalline diamond substrate and a diamond passivation layer were studied via transient thermal modeling. Because of the low thermal diffusivity of β-Ga2O3, the use of a β-Ga2O3 composite substrate (bottom-side cooling) must be augmented by a diamond passivation layer (top-side cooling) to effectively cool the device active region under both steady-state and transient operating conditions. Without no proper cooling applied, the steady-state device-to-package thermal resistance of a homoepitaxial β-Ga2O3 MOSFET is 2.6 times higher than that for a GaN-on-Si HEMT. Replacing the substrate with polycrystalline diamond (under a 6.5 μm-thick β-Ga2O3 layer) could reduce the steady-state temperature rise by 65% compared to that for a homoepitaxial β-Ga2O3 MOSFET. However, for high frequency power switching applications beyond the ~102 kHz range, bottom-side cooling (integration with a high thermal conductivity substrate) does not improve the transient thermal response of the device. Adding a diamond passivation over layer diamond not only suppresses the steadystate temperature rise, but also drastically reduces the transient temperature rise under high frequency operating conditions.