Effect of Hydrogen on Electrical Performance of Pt/Au β-Ga2O3 (001) Schottky Barrier Diodes

The effect of hydrogen on $\beta $ -gallium oxide (Ga2O3) (001) Schottky barrier diode (SBD) device has been studied in this article for the first time. It was found that the electrical performance of the $\beta $ -Ga2O3 SBDs changed significantly after hydrogen treatment, including the turn-on voltage ( ${V}_{\text {on}}{)}$ decreased by 0.3 V and the forward ( ${J}_{\text {F}}{)}$ current density increased by 28frequency-dependent conductance technique, it is found that the time constants were decreased from 0.09–0.3 to 0.06– $0.09 ~\mu \text{s}$ after hydrogen treatment. Meanwhile, the density of interface states decreases from $2.1\times 10^{{12}}$ – $4.2\times 10^{{12}}$ to $7.5\times 10^{{11}}$ – $1.6\times 10^{{12}}$ cm $^{-{2}}\cdot $ eV−1 with a decrease in trap activation energy from 0.1–0.13 to 0.09–0.1 eV after hydrogen treatment. Utilizing the time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS), it is observed that the density of hydrogen at the Pt/Ga2O3 interface is increased by more than one order of magnitude for the device with hydrogen treatment. The effect of hydrogen on Pt/Au $\beta $ -Ga2O3 SBDs can be mainly attributed to the passivation of traps by hydrogen atoms near the Pt/Ga2O3 interface.