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.

由于其能源效率，硅互补金属氧化物半导体 (CMOS) 技术是当前集成电路行业的驱动力。硅的窄带隙导致宽带隙半导体材料的进步，例如氮化镓（GaN），在电力电子、射频功率放大器和恶劣环境应用中受到青睐。然而，事实证明，GaN CMOS 逻辑电路的开发具有挑战性，因为缺乏将 n 沟道和 p 沟道场效应晶体管集成在单个衬底上的合适策略。在这里，我们报告了增强型 n 沟道和 p 沟道 GaN 场效应晶体管的单片集成以及基于 GaN 的互补逻辑集成电路的制造。我们构建了一系列基本逻辑门——包括 NOT、NAND、NOR 和传输门——并表明逆变器具有轨到轨运行、抑制的静态功耗、高热稳定性和大噪声容限。我们还演示了包含级联逻辑反相器的锁存单元和环形振荡器。