


When a HEMT is built from AlGaN/GaN, higher power density and breakdown voltage can be achieved.

The fact that the charge carriers are majority carriers yields high switching speeds, and the fact that the low band gap semiconductor is undoped means that there are no donor atoms to cause scattering and thus yields high mobility. Note that the undoped narrow band gap material now has excess majority charge carriers. The diffusion process continues until electron diffusion and electron drift balance each other, creating a junction at equilibrium similar to a p-n junction.

The electric field will push electrons back to the wide band element’s conduction band. The movement of electrons will cause a change in potential and thus an electric field between the materials. These electrons will diffuse to the adjacent narrow band material’s conduction band due to the availability of states with lower energy. The HEMTs' exceptional carrier mobility and switching speed come from the following conditions: The wide band element is doped with donor atoms thus it has excess electrons in its conduction band. They are widely used in satellite receivers, in low power amplifiers and in the defense industry. HEMT transistors are able to operate at higher frequencies than ordinary transistors, up to millimeter wave frequencies, and are used in high-frequency products such as cell phones, satellite television receivers, voltage converters, and radar equipment. Both of these uses are made possible by the FET’s unique current–voltage characteristics. FETs can also be used as amplifiers for large amounts of current using a small voltage as a control signal. Like other FETs, HEMTs are used in integrated circuits as digital on-off switches. Devices incorporating more indium generally show better high-frequency performance, while in recent years, gallium nitride HEMTs have attracted attention due to their high-power performance. A commonly used material combination is GaAs with AlGaAs, though there is wide variation, dependent on the application of the device. a heterojunction) as the channel instead of a doped region (as is generally the case for a MOSFET). A high-electron-mobility transistor ( HEMT), also known as heterostructure FET ( HFET) or modulation-doped FET ( MODFET), is a field-effect transistor incorporating a junction between two materials with different band gaps (i.e.
