Exploiting the Nanostructural Anisotropy of β-Ga₂O₃ to Demonstrate Giant Improvement in Titanium/Gold Ohmic Contacts

Here we demonstrate a dramatic improvement in Ti/Au ohmic contact performance by utilizing the anisotropic nature of β-Ga₂O₃. Under a similar doping concentration, Ti/Au metallization on (100) Ga₂O₃ shows a specific contact resistivity 5.11 × 10^-5 Ω·cm², while that on (010) Ga₂O₃ is as high as 3.29 × 10^-3 Ω·cm². Temperature-dependent contact performance and analyses suggest that field emission or thermionic field emission is the dominant charge transport mechanism across the Ti/Au-(100) Ga₂O₃ junction, depending on whether reactive ion etching was used prior to metallization. Cross-sectional high-resolution microscopy and elemental mapping analysis show that the in situ-formed Ti-TiO layer on (100) Ga₂O₃ is relatively thin (2-2.5 nm) and homogeneous, whereas that on (010) substrates is much thicker (3-5 nm) and shows nanoscale facet-like features at the interface. The anisotropic nature of monoclinic Ga₂O₃, including anisotropic surface energy and mass diffusivity, is likely to be the main cause of the differences observed under microscopy and in electrical properties. The findings here provide direct evidence and insights into the dependence of device performance on the atomic-scale structural anisotropy of β-Ga₂O₃. Moreover, the investigative strategy here─combining comprehensive electrical and materials characterization of interfaces on different semiconductor orientations─can be applied to assess a variety of other anisotropic oxide junctions.