Recent advances in the growth of gallium oxide thin films employing various growth techniques—a review

Abstract Gallium oxide (Ga 2 O 3 ) is rapidly emerging as a material of choice for the development of solar blind photodetectors and power electronic devices which are particularly suitable in harsh environment applications, owing to its wide bandgap and extremely high Baliga figure of merit. The Ga 2 O 3 based devices show robustness against chemical, thermal and radiation environments. Unfortunately, the current Ga 2 O 3 technology is still not mature for commercial usage. Thus, extensive research on the growth of various polymorph of Ga 2 O 3 materials has been carried out. This article aims to provide an overview of the current understanding of epitaxial growth of different phases of Ga 2 O 3 by various growth techniques including pulsed laser deposition, molecular beam epitaxy, metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, sputtering, mist chemical vapor deposition and atomic layer deposition. The review also investigates the factors such as the growth temperature, pressure, carrier gas, III/V ratio, substrate as well as doping which would influence the synthesis and the stability of meta stable phases of Ga 2 O 3 . In addition, a thorough discussion of growth window is also provided using phase diagrams for aforementioned epitaxial deposition methods.