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Focused Ga + ion milling of lightly Si-doped, n-type Ga 2 O 3 was performed with 2–30 kV ions at normal incidence and beam currents that were a function of beam voltage, 65 nA for 30 kV, 26 nA for 10 kV, 13 nA for 5 kV, and 7.1 nA for 2 kV, to keep the milling depth constant at 100 nm. Approximate milling rates were 15, 6, 2.75, and 1.5 μm 3 /s for 30, 10, 5, and 2 kV, respectively. The electrical effects of the ion damage were characterized by Schottky barrier height and diode ideality factor on vertical rectifier structures comprising 10 μm epitaxial n-Ga 2 O 3 on n + Ga 2 O 3 substrates, while the structural damage was imaged by transmission electron microscopy. The reverse bias leakage was largely unaffected even by milling at 30 kV beam energy, while the forward current-voltage characteristics showed significant deterioration at 5 kV, with an increase in the ideality factor from 1.25 to 2.25. The I–V characteristics no longer showed rectification for the 30 kV condition. Subsequent annealing up to 400 °C produced substantial recovery of the I–V characteristics for all beam energies and was sufficient to restore the initial ideality factor completely for beam energies up to 5 kV. Even the 30 kV-exposed rectifiers showed a recovery of the ideality factor to 1.8. The surface morphology of the ion-milled Ga 2 O 3 was smooth even at 30 kV ion energy, with no evidence for preferential sputtering of the oxygen. The surface region was not amorphized by extended ion milling (35 min) at 5 kV with the samples held at 25 °C, as determined by electron diffraction patterns, and significant recovery of the lattice order was observed after annealing at 400 °C.
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Sidewall Electrical Damage in β-Ga 2 O 3 Rectifiers Exposed to Ga + Focused Ion Beams
The energy and beam current dependence of Ga+focused ion beam milling damage on the sidewall of vertical rectifiers fabricated on n-type Ga2O3was investigated with 5–30 kV ions and beam currents from 1.3–20 nA. The sidewall damage was introduced by etching a mesa along one edge of existing Ga2O3rectifiers. We employed on-state resistance, forward and reverse leakage current, Schottky barrier height, and diode ideality factor from the vertical rectifiers as potential measures of the extent of the ion-induced sidewall damage. Rectifiers of different diameters were exposed to the ion beams and the “zero-area” parameters extracted by extrapolating to zero area and normalizing for milling depth. Forward currents degraded with exposure to any of our beam conductions, while reverse current was unaffected. On-state resistance was found to be most sensitive of the device parameters to Ga+beam energy and current. Beam current was the most important parameter in creating sidewall damage. Use of subsequent lower beam energies and currents after an initial 30 kV mill sequence was able to reduce residual damage effects but not to the point of initial lower beam current exposures.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1856662
- PAR ID:
- 10411394
- Publisher / Repository:
- The Electrochemical Society
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 2162-8769
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- Article No. 055003
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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