Abstract
In this work, metal–semiconductor–metal solar-blind ultraviolet photoconductors were fabricated based on the β-Ga2O3 thin films which were grown on the c-plane sapphire substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. Then, the effects of β-Ga2O3 annealing on both its material characteristics and the device photoconductivity were studied. The β-Ga2O3 thin films were annealed at 800, 900, 1000, and 1100 °C, respectively. Moreover, the annealing time was fixed at 2 h, and the annealing ambients were oxygen, nitrogen, and vacuum (4.9 × 10−4 Pa), respectively. The crystalline quality and texture of the β-Ga2O3 thin films before and after annealing were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), showing that higher annealing temperature can result in a weaker intensity of \(\left( {\bar{4}02} \right)\) diffraction peak and a lower device photoresponsivity. Furthermore, the vacuum-annealed sample exhibits the highest photoresponsivity compared with the oxygen- and nitrogen-annealed samples at the same annealing temperature. In addition, the persistent photoconductivity effect is effectively restrained in the oxygen-annealed sample even with the lowest photoresponsivity.
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This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61223002) and the Research Foundation for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (No. 2012018530003).
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Sheng, T., Liu, XZ., Qian, LX. et al. Photoelectric properties of β-Ga2O3 thin films annealed at different conditions. Rare Met. 41, 1375–1379 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12598-015-0575-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12598-015-0575-5