Recently, Ga2O3-based, solar-blind photodetectors (PDs) have been extensively studied for various commercial and military applications. However, to date, studies have focused only on the crystalline phases, especially β-Ga2O3, and the crystalline quality must be carefully controlled because of its strong impact on device characteristics. Based on previous reports, amorphous-semiconductor-based PDs can also be expected to exhibit excellent photodetection characteristics. In this work, amorphous gallium oxide thin films were deposited by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering, and the metal–semiconductor–metal (MSM) PD was fabricated and compared with a β-Ga2O3 film prepared side-by-side as the control sample. The as-sputtered film possessed a high density of defects, including structural disorders, oxygen vacancies, and likely, dangling bonds, resulting in record-high responsivity (70.26 A/W) for a thin-film-type gallium oxide PD due to a high internal gain and the contribution of extrinsic transitions despite a relatively large dark current. The high sensitivity was further confirmed by a high 250 nm/350 nm rejection ratio exceeding 105, the specific detectivity as large as 1.26 × 1014 Jones, and a cutoff wavelength of 265.5 nm. A rapid recovery (0.10 s) rather than a strong, persistent photoconductivity was observed and attributed to effective surface recombination. Our findings contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of highly nonstoichiometric amorphous gallium oxide thin films and reveal additional pathways for the development of high-performance, solar-blind PDs that are inexpensive, large-area, and suitable for mass production.

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The effects of Ta incorporation in La2O3 gate dielectric of amorphous InGaZnO thin-film transistor are investigated. Since the Ta incorporation is found to effectively enhance the moisture resistance of the La2O3 film and thus suppress the formation of La(OH)3, both the dielectric roughness and trap density at/near the InGaZnO/dielectric interface can be reduced, resulting in a significant improvement in the electrical characteristics of transistor. Among the samples with different Ta contents, the one with a Ta/(Ta + La) atomic ratio of 21.7% exhibits the best performance, including high saturation carrier mobility of 23.4 cm2/V·s, small subthreshold swing of 0.177 V/dec, and negligible hysteresis. Nevertheless, excessive incorporation of Ta can degrade the device characteristics due to newly generated Ta-related traps.

Ga 2 O 3 -based solar-blind photodetectors have been extensively investigated for a wide range of applications. However, to date, a lot of research has focused on optimizing the epitaxial technique or constructing a heterojunction, and studies concerning surface passivation, a key technique in electronic and optoelectronic devices, are severely lacking. Here, we report an ultrasensitive metal−semiconductor− metal photodetector employing a β-Ga 2 O 3 homojunction structure realized by lowenergy surface fluorine plasma treatment, in which an ultrathin fluorine-doped layer served for surface passivation. Without inserting/capping a foreign layer, this strategy utilized fluorine dopants to both passivate local oxygen vacancies and suppress surface chemisorption. The dual effects have opposite impacts on device current magnitude (by suppressing metal/semiconductor junction leakage and inhibiting surfacechemisorption-induced carrier consumption) but dominate in dark and under illumination, respectively. By means of such unique mechanisms, the simultaneous improvement on dark and photo current characteristics was achieved, leading to the sensitivity enhanced by nearly 1 order of magnitude. Accordingly, the 15 min treated sample exhibited striking competitiveness in terms of comprehensive properties, including a dark current as low as 6 pA, a responsivity of 18.43 A/W, an external quantum efficiency approaching 1 × 10 4 %, a specific detectivity of 2.48 × 10 14 Jones, and a solar-blind/UV rejection ratio close to 1 × 10 5 . Furthermore, the response speed was effectively accelerated because of the reduction on metal/semiconductor interface trap states. Our findings provide a facile, economical, and contamination-free surface passivation technique, which unlocks the potential for comprehensively improving the performance of β-Ga 2 O 3 solar−blind metal− semiconductor−metal photodetectors.

thin film, which yielded a smoother surface and even a terraceand-step-like morphology on the substrate, resulting in improved crystallinity of the epitaxial film. Accordingly, both the dark and photo currents of β-Ga 2 O 3 metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) PDs were increased by the enhanced carrier mobility (μ) of the more crystalline film. However, the substrate-annealing temperature must be sufficiently high to offset the rise of the dark current and thus achieve a remarkable improvement in the photodetection properties. As a result, the PD fabricated on the 1050 °C-annealed substrate exhibited extremely high sensitivity, for example, high responsivity (R) of 54.9 A/W and large specific detectivity (D*) of 3.71 × 10 14 Jones. Both parameters were increased by one order of magnitude because of the combined effects of the dramatic increase in μ and the effective reduction in defect-related recombination centers. Nevertheless, the latter also prolonged the recovery time of the PD. These findings suggest another way to develop β-Ga 2 O 3 PD with extremely high sensitivity.

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