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The thermal stability of n/n + β -Ga 2 O 3 epitaxial layer/substrate structures with sputtered ITO on both sides to act as rectifying contacts on the lightly doped layer and Ohmic on the heavily doped substrate is reported. The resistivity of the ITO deposited separately on Si decreased from 1.83 × 10 −3 Ω.cm as-deposited to 3.6 × 10 −4 Ω.cm after 300 °C anneal, with only minor reductions at higher temperatures (2.8 × 10 −4 Ω.cm after 600 °C anneals). The Schottky barrier height also decreased with annealing, from 0.98 eV in the as-deposited samples to 0.85 eV after 500 °C annealing. The reverse breakdown voltage exhibited a negative temperature coefficient of −0.46 V.C −1 up to an annealing temperature of 400 °C and degraded faster at higher temperatures. Transmission Electron Microscopy showed significant reaction at the ITO and Ga 2 O 3 interface above 300 °C, with a very degraded contact stack after annealing at 500 °C. 

The effects of downstream plasma exposure with O 2 , N 2 or CF 4 discharges on Si-doped Ga 2 O 3 Schottky diode forward and reverse current-voltage characteristics were investigated. The samples were exposed to discharges with rf power of 50 W plasma at a pressure of 400 mTorr and a fixed treatment time of 1 min to simulate dielectric layer removal, photoresist ashing or surface cleaning steps. Schottky contacts were deposited through a shadow mask after exposure to avoid any changes to the surface. A Schottky barrier height of 1.1 eV was obtained for the reference sample without plasma treatment, with an ideality factor of 1.0. The diodes exposed to CF 4 showed a 0.25 V shift from the I–V of the reference sample due to a Schottky barrier height lowering around 14%. The diodes showed a decrease of Schottky barrier height of 2.5 and 6.5% with O 2 or N 2 treatments, respectively. The effect of plasma exposure on the ideality factor of diodes treated with these plasmas was minimal; 0.2% for O 2 and N 2 , 0.3% for CF 4 , respectively. The reverse leakage currents were 1.2, 2.2 and 4.8 μ A cm −2 for the diodes treated with O 2 , and CF 4 , and N 2 respectively. The effect of downstream plasma treatment on diode on-resistance and on-off ratio were also minimal. The changes observed are much less than caused by exposure to hydrogen-containing plasmas and indicate that downstream plasma stripping of films from Ga 2 O 3 during device processing is a relatively benign approach. 

We report the effect of extended duration electron beam exposure on the minority carrier transport properties of 10 MeV proton irradiated (fluence ∼10¹⁴cm⁻²) Si-dopedβ-Ga₂O₃Schottky rectifiers. The diffusion length (L) of minority carriers is found to decrease with temperature from 330 nm at 21 °C to 289 nm at 120 °C, with an activation energy of ∼26 meV. This energy corresponds to the presence of shallow Si trap-levels. Extended duration electron beam exposure enhancesLfrom 330 nm to 726 nm at room temperature. The rate of increase forLis lower with increased temperature, with an activation energy of 43 meV. Finally, a brief comparison of the effect of electron injection on proton irradiated, alpha-particle irradiated and a reference Si-dopedβ-Ga₂O₃Schottky rectifiers is presented.