Emerging GaN Technologies: Innovations, Applications, and Future Prospects

Dear Colleagues,

As a cornerstone of wide-bandgap semiconductors, Gallium Nitride (GaN) continues to drive revolutionary advancements in modern power, high-frequency, and extreme-environment electronics. This Special Issue will collect cutting-edge research and comprehensive reviews, establishing a closed-loop academic narrative spanning a range of topics from fundamental crystal growth to terminal switching power applications. We aim to provide a high-level cross-disciplinary platform for scholars, researchers, and industry pioneers to showcase breakthrough concepts and foster collaborative innovation in next-generation high-performance and high-reliability GaN technologies.

This Special Issue will cover (but is not limited to) the following topics:

• GaN Material Growth and Physics: Advanced hetero-/homo-epitaxial techniques on diverse engineering substrates, growth of novel full-composition wide-bandgap and ultra-wide-bandgap GaN-based alloys, strain engineering, interface physics, and advanced microscopic defect characterization.
• Advanced Device Fabrication and Process Integration: Optimization of micro- and nano-scale contact metallization, advanced passivation, thermal management interfaces, and wafer-level manufacturing technologies compatible with mainstream semiconductor foundries.
• Emerging Device Designs and Architectures: Structural and topology innovations for next-generation switching electronics, high-voltage vertical configurations, monolithic power/logic/RF integration, multi-dimensional carrier transport architectures, and advanced physics-based modeling and simulation.
• Device Reliability Physics and Failure Mechanisms: In-depth investigations into degradation kinetics and failure modes under extreme or long-term operational stresses, including dynamic charge trapping/detrapping dynamics, high-temperature/high-voltage electrical stress degradation, thermal runaway, and radiation-hardened physics for aerospace or harsh-environment applications.
• System-Level Applications in Switching Power Supplies: Innovative deployment of GaN-based technologies in highly efficient and power-dense electronic systems, including high-frequency (kHz-to-MHz) switching topologies, intelligent driving and ultrafast protection circuitry, magnetics and packaging integration, and deployments in automotive electronics, data center power delivery, and smart grid infrastructures.

While the current body of solid-state electronics literature contains extensive research on conventional lateral GaN switching components, this Special Issue bridges the critical gap between fundamental physics and system-level deployment by organically interconnecting five dimensions: “growth, fabrication, design, reliability, and application.” Rather than merely treating GaN as a discrete component replacement for mature technologies, this collection emphasizes emerging paradigms capable of fully unlocking sub-critical material limits. This unique, holistic perspective differentiates this Special Issues from more generalized electronics journals, offering a forward-looking and comprehensive roadmap for the next decade of GaN innovation.

Dr. Mao Jia
Dr. Yang Wen
Guest Editors

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• gallium nitride
• heteroepitaxy and homoeitaxy
• CMOS-compatible process
• monolithic integration
• RF and power device
• GaN reliability
• GaN power converters
• intelligent gate drivers