The impact of etching β-Ga₂O₃ substrates to reduce interfacial silicon

One of the most promising materials in the past decade is β-Ga₂O₃. β-Ga₂O₃ is an ultra-wide band gap semiconductor material that is of great interest due to its large breakdown field and the availability of the native substrate. One problem that faces β-Ga₂O₃ is the presence of interfacial silicon that creates parasitic conduction channel, limiting the potential of devices made of β-Ga₂O₃ . This work investigates methods to reduce interfacial silicon on β-Ga₂O₃ substrates. These films are grown via Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE), we use Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) to observe the changes in interfacial chemical composition, and we utilized Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) to observe the effect the substrate preparation will have on the surface of the substrates.