Determination of Energy Band-Offsets of Ga2o3 for Device Modeling

Student: Justin Rudie

Major Professor: Dr. Gregory Salamo

Research Area(s):

Microelectronics

Photonics

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Background/Relevance

 

  • Gallium Oxide is a large bandgap material that is of interest for use in high power applications
  • Silicon is being replaced with materials more suited for use as semi-conductors such as Gallium Nitride. Certain figures of merit show Ga2 O3 to be ~4000 times more suitable than Si.

Innovation

 

  • Collaboration with industry partner Agnitron allows for quantity and quality of samples necessary for extensive data collection.
  • Measurements on multiple instruments (XPS, AFM, Shimadzu) increases confidence in results

Approach

  • X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) directly measures core level energies of elements
  • Valance band maximum (VBM) energy levels found by linear extrapolation of valance band edge.
  • Valance band offset (VBO) is calculated from core level energies and VBM energies:

Key Results

Conclusions

 

  • With the available data the VBO was determined to be 0.12 eV.
  • Confidence in this value still needs to be accurately determined.