The electric field influence on E_C-0.18 eV electron trap level in (100)-oriented β-Ga₂O₃ crystals grown by the Czochralski method

In this Letter, we demonstrate the application of Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy (DLTS) and Laplace DLTS (L-DLTS) techniques to unintentionally doped β-Ga₂O₃ crystals grown by the Czochralski method. It is clearly shown that the capacitance signal associated with the electron emission from a trap level previously identified in the literature as E14 and characterized by an activation energy of 0.18 eV is found to be a superposition of electron emissions from two closely spaced energy levels. Furthermore, we noted that the corresponding L-DLTS signal splits into two well separated components with activation energies of 196 and 209 meV, and the splitting occurs as the electric field in the space charge region of a Schottky diode exceeds 2 × 10⁷ V/m (0.2 MV/cm). Additionally, a strong dependency of DLTS and L-DLTS signals on the electric field strength and resulting enhancement of the electron emission from these two trap states agree well with the 1D Poole–Frenkel (PF) model, suggesting donor-like behavior of both states. Finally, we found that the barrier height for thermal emission of the electrons is significantly reduced in our samples by 121 meV due to the PF effect for experimental conditions corresponding to an electric field of 3.5 × 10⁷ V/m (0.35 MV/cm).