Recent progress in the growth of β-Ga2O3 for power electronics applications

Monoclinic β-Ga2O3 (bandgap = 4.85 eV) is a transparent semiconducting oxide with very promising perspectives especially in solar blind UV photodetectors and high power device applications. In particular, for high power switching β-Ga2O3 is predicted to outperform the leading technology based on SiC and GaN, due to a much higher calculated critical field strength. Another significant advantage of β-Ga2O3, especially in view of large-scale production, is that large bulk crystals can be grown from the melt by standard techniques, making available reasonably-priced native substrates for the growth of high quality homoepitaxial layers, which is essential for the fabrication of high performance power devices. This review article focuses on the growth of bulk and homoepitaxial β-Ga2O3, summarizing the research work carried out in this field and pointing out the strengths and the main challenges of different growth techniques. The impressive material development already achieved for both bulk and epitaxial β-Ga2O3 crystals has enabled the fabrication of prototype devices with very promising performances, demonstrating the outstanding potential of β-Ga2O3 for power electronics applications.