Gallium nitride-based complementary logic integrated circuits

Owing to its energy efficiency, silicon complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology is the current driving force of the integrated circuit industry. Silicon’s narrow bandgap has led to the advancement of wide-bandgap semiconductor materials, such as gallium nitride (GaN), being favoured in power electronics, radiofrequency power amplifiers and harsh environment applications. However, the development of GaN CMOS logic circuits has proved challenging because of the lack of a suitable strategy for integrating n-channel and p-channel field-effect transistors on a single substrate. Here we report the monolithic integration of enhancement-mode n-channel and p-channel GaN field-effect transistors and the fabrication of GaN-based complementary logic integrated circuits. We construct a family of elementary logic gates—including NOT, NAND, NOR and transmission gates—and show that the inverters exhibit rail-to-rail operation, suppressed static power dissipation, high thermal stability and large noise margins. We also demonstrate latch cells and ring oscillators comprising cascading logic inverters.