Evaluation of the shock-induced phase transition in β-Ga2O3

Abstract

A series of shock recovery experiments were conducted on single-crystal β-Ga2O3 involving the impact of a flyer plate accelerated by a single-stage powder-propellant gun. The samples that recovered from shock were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis and Raman spectroscopy. The XRD results of the β-Ga2O3(010) sample shocked at a pressure of 16 GPa indicated that a transition from the β to α phase occurred. In contrast, no phase transition was detected for the sample shocked at 11 GPa. Analysis of the shocked samples suggests that the onset pressure for the transition from the β- to α-Ga2O3 phase lies between 11 and 16 GPa. Although the transition from the β- to α-Ga2O3 phase was accomplished in only a tiny part of the shocked sample, our results combined with numerical simulation results indicate that the shock-induced phase transition from β- to α-Ga2O3 was initiated within several hundred nanoseconds.