Direct One-Step Plasma-Chemical Synthesis of Nanostructured β-Ga2O3–GaN Thin Films of Various Compositions

For the first time, nanostructured thin films of the β-Ga 2 O 3 −GaN system have been obtained by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) on c-plane sapphire substrates. High-purity gallium metal, as well as high-purity gaseous nitrogen and oxygen, were used as sources of macrocomponents. Low-temperature nonequilibrium plasma of an inductively coupled RF (40.68 MHz) discharge at reduced pressure (0.01 torr) was the initiator of chemical transformations between the reactants. A mixture of oxygen and nitrogen was used as a plasma-forming gas. The plasma-chemical process was studied using optical emission spectroscopy (OES). The resulting β-Ga 2 O 3 −GaN thin films with a GaN content of 2 to 7% were characterized by various analytical methods.