Abstract The materials system of ultra-wide bandgap Ga2O3 has already shown great promise in the field of solar-blind photodetectors with high photoresponsivity, high photoresponsivity gain and low dark current. These promising results have been achieved on Ga2O3 films of different polymorphs and by different methods, often not with particularly high crystalline quality. In fact, it would often seem the case that the lower the crystalline quality of the films, the higher the photosensitivity and its gain. This, however, is in most cases accompanied by unusually long photocurrent build-up and decay times. We show that the experimental results can be explained by models in which the high photosensitivity gain is related to the effects of holes being trapped by deep states that, in Schottky diodes, results in the decrease of the Schottky barrier height with consequent increase of electron current, and in Metal-Semiconductor-Metal (MSM) structures additionally gives rise to the usual gain increase due to the increased concentration and lifetime of electrons. We present and discuss the models describing the effects in Ga2O3 Schottky diodes, MSM structures, unipolar and bipolar heterojunctions and propose possible candidates for the role of the hole traps in different Ga2O3 polymorphs. We also discuss the existing results for the photocurrent build-up and decay times and offer possible explainations of the observed temperature dependences of the characteristic times where such data are present.
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