Defect states and their electric field-enhanced electron thermal emission in heavily Zr-doped β -Ga2O3 crystals

Abstract

Performing deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) on Schottky diodes, we investigated defect levels below the conduction band minima (Ec) in Czochralski-grown unintentionally doped (UID) and vertical gradient freeze-grown Zr-doped β-Ga2O3 crystals. In UID crystals with an electron concentration of 1017 cm−3, we observe levels at 0.18 eV and 0.46 eV in addition to the previously reported 0.86 (E2) and 1.03 eV (E3) levels. For 1018 cm−3 Zr-doped Ga2O3, signatures at 0.30 eV (E15) and 0.71 eV (E16) are present. For the highest Zr doping of 5 × 1018 cm−3, we observe only one signature at 0.59 eV. Electric field-enhanced emission rates are demonstrated via increasing the reverse bias during measurement. The 0.86 eV signature in the UID sample displays phonon-assisted tunneling enhanced thermal emission and is consistent with the widely reported E2 (FeGa) defect. The 0.71 eV (E16) signature in the lower-Zr-doped crystal also exhibits phonon-assisted tunneling emission enhancement. Taking into account that the high doping in the Zr-doped diodes also increases the electric field, we propose that the 0.59 eV signature in the highest Zr-doped sample likely corresponds to the 0.71 eV signature in lower-doped samples. Our analysis highlights the importance of testing for and reporting on field-enhanced emission, especially the electric field present during DLTS and other characterization experiments on β-Ga2O3 along with the standard emission energy, cross section, and lambda-corrected trap density. This is important because of the intended use of β-Ga2O3 in high-field devices and the many orders of magnitude of possible doping.