MBE GROWN _-Ga2O3 THIN FILMS ON M-PLANE SAPPHIRE FOR POWER ELECTRONICS AND BANDGAP ENGINEERING
Gallium oxide (Ga2O3) is emerging as a potential next generation semiconducting material for power electronics due to its wide band gap of 4.4 to 5.0 eV. As a result of the discovery of n-type conductivity in _-Ga2O3 and increased availability of _-Ga2O3 substrates, research on _-Ga2O3 has increased exponentially in recent decades. Of the five polymorphs of Ga2O3 , the monoclinic _-phase is the most thermodynamically stable, and is the only phase of Ga2O3 that can be formed in bulk from melt-growth techniques. The metastable corundum phase _-Ga2O3 has a band gap of 5.25 - 5.6 eV, resulting in a higher theoretical breakdown voltage and a lower theoretical on-resistance than _-Ga2O3. Interest in -Ga2O3 has grown significantly as it can be grown epitaxially on low cost sapphire (-Al2O3) substrates. Bulk _-Ga2O3 substrates remain expensive, while bulk _-Al2O3 substrates are already commercially available in 8 inch wafers. In this work, _-(AlxGa1_x)2O3 films were grown on m-plane _-Al2O3 by plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy (PAMBE) at x = 0, 0.5, and 1. Average film thickness was approximately 60 nm. Characterization of films by RHEED, UV-Vis, and XRD confirmed the _-phase Ga2O3 corundum crystal structure. Grown _-Ga2O3 films had optical band gaps of 5.3 eV measured by UV-Vis and surface roughness of 0.8 to 1.2 nm measured by AFM.