This is a review article on the current status and future prospects of the research and development on gallium oxide (Ga 2 O 3 ) power devices. Ga 2 O 3 possesses excellent material properties, in particular for power device applications. It is also attractive from an industrial viewpoint since large-size, high-quality wafers can be manufactured from a single-crystal bulk synthesized by melt-growth methods. These two features have drawn much attention to Ga 2 O 3 as a new wide bandgap semiconductor following SiC and GaN. In this review, we describe the recent progress in the research and development on fundamental technologies of Ga 2 O 3 devices, covering single-crystal bulk and wafer production, homoepitaxial thin film growth by molecular beam epitaxy and halide vapor phase epitaxy, as well as device processing and characterization of metal-semiconductor field-effect transistors, metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors and Schottky barrier diodes.

We investigated the temperature-dependent electrical properties of Pt/Ga2O3 Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) fabricated on n–-Ga2O3 drift layers grown on single-crystal n+-Ga2O3 (001) substrates by halide vapor phase epitaxy. In an operating temperature range from 21 °C to 200 °C, the Pt/Ga2O3 (001) Schottky contact exhibited a zero-bias barrier height of 1.09–1.15 eV with a constant near-unity ideality factor. The current–voltage characteristics of the SBDs were well-modeled by thermionic emission in the forward regime and thermionic field emission in the reverse regime over the entire temperature range.

Thick high-purity β-Ga2O3 layers of high crystalline quality were grown homoepitaxially by halide vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) using gaseous GaCl and O2 on (001) β-Ga2O3 substrates prepared by edge-defined film-fed growth. The surface morphology and structural quality of the grown layer improved with increasing growth temperature. X-ray diffraction ω-rocking curves for the (002) and (400) reflections for the layer grown at 1000 °C had small full widths at half maximum. Secondary ion mass spectrometry and electrical characteristics revealed that the growth of high-purity β-Ga2O3 layers with low effective donor concentration (Nd − Na < 1013 cm−3) is possible by HVPE.

A freestanding GaN substrate over 2 inches in size was successfully prepared for the first time by hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) using GaAs as a starting substrate. In the experiment, a GaAs (111)A substrate with a SiO 2 mask pattern on its surface was used. A thick GaN layer was grown on the GaAs substrate at 1030 • C through the openings in the SiO 2 mask. By dissolving the GaAs substrate in aqua regia, a freestanding GaN substrate about 500 µm thick was obtained. The fullwidth at half maximum (FWHM) in the ω-mode X-ray diffraction (XRD) profile of GaN (0002) plane was 106 arcsec. The dislocation density of the GaN substrate obtained was determined to be as low as 2 × 10 5 cm −2 by plan-view transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Hall measurements revealed the n-type conductivity of the GaN substrate with typical carrier concentration and carrier mobility of 5 × 10 18 cm −3 and 170 cm 2 ·V −1 ·s −1 , respectively.

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