Deep-Ultraviolet Photodetection Using Single-Crystalline β-Ga₂O₃/NiO Heterojunctions

In recent years, β-Ga₂O₃/NiO heterojunction diodes have been studied, but reports in the literature lack an investigation of an epitaxial growth process of high-quality single-crystalline β-Ga₂O₃/NiO thin films via electron microscopy analysis and the fabrication and characterization of an optoelectronic device based on the resulting heterojunction stack. This work investigates the thin-film growth of a heterostructure stack comprising n-type β-Ga₂O₃ and p-type cubic NiO layers grown consecutively on c-plane sapphire using pulsed laser deposition, as well as the fabrication of solar-blind ultraviolet-C photodetectors based on the resulting p-n junction heterodiodes. Several characterization techniques were employed to investigate the heterostructure, including X-ray crystallography, ion beam analysis, and high-resolution electron microscopy imaging. X-ray diffraction analysis confirmed the single-crystalline nature of the grown monoclinic and cubic (2̅01) β-Ga₂O₃ and (111) NiO films, respectively, whereas electron microscopy analysis confirmed the sharp layer transitions and high interface qualities in the NiO/β-Ga₂O₃/sapphire double-heterostructure stack. The photodetectors exhibited a peak spectral responsivity of 415 mA/W at 7 V reverse-bias voltage for a 260 nm incident-light wavelength and 46.5 pW/μm² illuminating power density. Furthermore, we also determined the band offset parameters at the thermodynamically stable heterointerface between NiO and β-Ga₂O₃ using high-resolution X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The valence and conduction band offsets values were found to be 1.15 ± 0.10 and 0.19 ± 0.10 eV, respectively, with a type-I energy band alignment.