Magnesium-doped gallium oxide may be utilized as a semi-insulating material for future generations of power devices. Spectroscopy and hybrid functional calculations were used to investigate defect levels in Czochralski-grown β-Ga2O3. Substitutional Mg dopants act as deep acceptors, while substitutional Ir impurities are deep donors. Hydrogen-annealed Ga2O3:Mg shows an IR peak at 3492 cm−1, assigned to an O-H bond-stretching mode of a neutral MgH complex. Despite compensation by Ir and Si and hydrogen passivation, high concentrations of Mg (1019 cm−3) can push the Fermi level to mid-gap or lower.

We report polarization dependent photoluminescence studies on unintentionally-, Mg-, and Ca-doped β-Ga2O3 bulk crystals grown by the Czochralski method. In particular, we observe a wavelength shift of the highest-energy UV emission which is dependent on the pump photon energy and polarization. For 240 nm (5.17 eV) excitation almost no shift of the UV emission is observed between E||b and E||c, while a shift of the UV emission centroid is clearly observed for 266 nm (4.66 eV), a photon energy lying between the band absorption onsets for the two polarizations. These results are consistent with UV emission originating from transitions between conduction band electrons and two differentially-populated self-trapped hole (STH) states. Calcuations based on hybrid and self-interaction-corrected density functional theories further validate that the polarization dependence is consistent with the relative stability of two STHs. This observation implies that the STHs form primarily at the oxygen atoms involved in the original photon absorption event, thus providing the connection between incident polarization and emission wavelength. The data imposes a lower bound on the energy separation between the self-trapped hole states of ~70–160 meV, which is supported by the calculations.

Currently, Fe doping in the ~10 18 cm-3 range is the most widely-available method for producing semi-insulating single crystalline-Ga 2 O 3 substrates. Red luminescence features have been reported from multiple types of Ga 2 O 3 samples including Fe-doped-Ga 2 O 3 , and attributed to Fe or N O. Herein, however, we demonstrate that the high-intensity red luminescence from Fe-doped β-Ga 2 O 3 commercial substrates consisting of two sharp peaks at 689 nm and 697 nm superimposed on a broader peak centered at 710 nm originates from Cr impurities present at a concentration near 2 ppm. The red emission exhibits twofold symmetry, peaks in intensity for excitation near absorption edge, seems to compete with Ga 2 O 3 emission at higher excitation energy and appears to be intensified in the presence of Fe. Based on polarized absorption, luminescence observations and Tanabe-Sugano diagram analysis, we propose a resonant energy transfer of photogenerated carriers in-Ga 2 O 3 matrix to octahedrally-coordinated Cr 3+ to give red luminescence, possibly also sensitized by Fe 3+ .

In this study, four yttrium aluminum garnet single crystals co-doped with cerium and lithium were produced by the Czochralski method and the scintillation and defect properties were investigated. Our results demonstrated an increase in luminescence with Li co-doping as well as elimination of longer decay times. Surprisingly, although Li is monovalent, no oxidation of cerium from Ce3+ to Ce4+ was found as would be expected to maintain charge neutrality. Additionally, thermoluminescence results indicated a reduction in the trapping of charge carriers by shallow and deep traps, and room temperature photoluminescence measurements showed an improvement in the Ce3+ 5d to 4f transition efficiency.

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