In this work, we report on the growth of highmobility β-Ga2O3 homoepitaxial thin films grown at a temperature much lower than the conventional growth temperature window for metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy. Low-temperature β-Ga2O3 thin films grown at 600 • C on Fe-doped (010) bulk substrates exhibits remarkable crystalline quality which is evident from the measured room temperature Hall mobility of 186 cm 2 /Vs for the unintentionally doped films. N-type doping is achieved by using Si as a dopant and a controllable doping in the range of 2×10 16 -2×10 19 cm −3 is studied. Si incorporation and activation is studied by comparing silicon concentration from secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) and electron concentration from temperature-dependent Hall measurements. The films exhibit high purity (low C and H concentrations) with very low concentration of compensating acceptors (2×10 15 cm −3 ) even at this growth temperature. Additionally, abrupt doping profile with forward decay of ∼ 5nm/dec (10 times improvement compared to what is observed for thin films grown at 810 • C) is demonstrated by growing at a lower temperature.

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β-Ga2O3 metal-semiconductor field-effect transistors are realized with superior reverse breakdown voltages (VBR) and ON currents (IDMAX). A sandwiched SiNx dielectric field-plate design is utilized that prevents etching-related damage in the active region and a deep mesa-etching was used to reduce reverse leakage. The device with LGD=34.5μm exhibits an IDMAX of 56 mA/mm, a high ION/IOFF ratio >108 and a very low reverse leakage until catastrophic breakdown at ∼4.4kV. A power figure of merit (PFOM) of 132 MW/cm2 was calculated for a VBR of ∼4.4kV. The reported results are the first >4kV-class Ga2O3 transistors to surpass the theoretical FOM of Silicon.

β-phase gallium oxide (Ga2O3) is an emerging ultrawide bandgap (UWBG) semiconductor (E G ∼ 4.8 eV), which promises generational improvements in the performance and manufacturing cost over today’s commercial wide bandgap power electronics based on GaN and SiC. However, overheating has been identified as a major bottleneck to the performance and commercialization of Ga2O3 device technologies. In this work, a novel Ga2O3/4H-SiC composite wafer with high heat transfer performance and an epi-ready surface finish has been developed using a fusion-bonding method. By taking advantage of low-temperature metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy, a Ga2O3 epitaxial layer was successfully grown on the composite wafer while maintaining the structural integrity of the composite wafer without causing interface damage. An atomically smooth homoepitaxial film with a room-temperature Hall mobility of ∼94 cm2/Vs and a volume charge of ∼3 × 1017 cm–3 was achieved at a growth temperature of 600 °C. Phonon transport across the Ga2O3/4H-SiC interface has been studied using frequency-domain thermoreflectance and a differential steady-state thermoreflectance approach. Scanning transmission electron microscopy analysis suggests that phonon transport across the Ga2O3/4H-SiC interface is dominated by the thickness of the SiN x bonding layer and an unintentionally formed SiO x interlayer. Extrinsic effects that impact the thermal conductivity of the 6.5 μm thick Ga2O3 layer were studied via time-domain thermoreflectance. Thermal simulation was performed to estimate the improvement of the thermal performance of a hypothetical single-finger Ga2O3 metal–semiconductor field-effect transistor fabricated on the composite substrate. This novel power transistor topology resulted in a ∼4.3× reduction in the junction-to-package device thermal resistance. Furthermore, an even more pronounced cooling effect is demonstrated when the composite wafer is implemented into the device design of practical multifinger devices. These innovations in device-level thermal management give promise to the full exploitation of the promising benefits of the UWBG material, which will lead to significant improvements in the power density and efficiency of power electronics over current state-of-the-art commercial devices.

We report on n-type degenerate doping in β-(Al0.26Ga0.74)2O3 epitaxial thin films grown by metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy and modulation doping in β-(Al0.26Ga0.74)2O3/β-Ga2O3 heterostructures. Alloy composition is confirmed using high-resolution X-ray diffraction measurements. Carrier concentration in the thin films is proportional to the silane molar flow. Room-temperature Hall measurements showed a high carrier concentration of 6 × 1018 cm–3 to 7.3 × 1019 cm−3 with a corresponding electron mobility between 53–27 cm2 V–1 s–1 in uniformly doped β-(Al0.26Ga0.74)2O3 layers. Modulation doping is used to realize a total electron sheet charge of 2.3 × 1012 cm−2 in a β-(Al0.26Ga0.74)2O3/β-Ga2O3 heterostructure using a uniformly doped β-(Al0.26Ga0.74)2O3 barrier layer and a thin spacer layer.