Effects of Neutron Irradiation on Electrical Performance of β-Ga2 O3 Schottky Barrier Diodes

The effect of neutron irradiation on the electrical performance of the
$\beta $
-Ga2O3 Schottky barrier diode (SBD) device has been studied in this work. After equivalent 1 MeV neutron irradiation with a fluence of
$1\times 10^{{14}}$
n/cm2, a 20% decrease in the forward current density (
${J}_{\text {F}}{)}$
, a 75% reduction in the reverse current density (
${J}_{\text {R}}{)}$
, and a 300 V increase in the breakdown voltage (
${V}_{\text {br}}{)}$
have been observed according to current–voltage (
${I}$
–
${V}{)}$
measurements. Utilizing the frequency-dependent conductance technique, it is found that the density of interface states located at Pt/Ga2O3 increases slightly from
$2.6\times 10^{{12}}$
–
$6.4\times 10^{{12}}$
to
$2.9\times 10^{{12}}$
–
$7.0\times 10^{{12}}$
cm
$^{-{2}}$
eV
$^{-{1}}$
with an increase in trap activation energy from 0.09–0.122 to 0.096–0.134 eV after neutron irradiation. Furthermore, based on the capacitance–voltage (
${C}$
–
${V}{)}$
measurement, it is observed that the carrier concentration across the Ga2O3 drift layer was decreased from
$1.80\times 10^{{16}}$
to
$1.35\times 10^{{16}}$
cm
$^{-{3}}$
after neutron irradiation. Considering the device performance change, it indicates that the bulk traps within the Ga2O3 drift layer instead of interface states dominate the device degradation.