Recently, β-Ga₂O₃ solar-blind photodetectors (PDs) have been extensively investigated for a wide range of civil and military applications. Among them, the metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) structure is one of the most popular candidates due to the merits of fabrication simplicity, the need for only one single-dopant active layer, easy integration with readout circuitry, high quantum efficiency, etc. However, there is generally a tradeoff between sensitivity and response speed due to the specific internal gain mechanism. In this work, MSM PDs based on the molecular beam epitaxy-grown β-Ga₂O₃ film were fabricated, and the metal/semiconductor (M/S) interfacial properties were tailored through the low-energy Ar-plasma pretreatment, resulting in the localized oxygen deficiency and a sharper interface. Accordingly, the PD sensitivity was dramatically improved, and the advantage of internal gain, i.e., high quantum efficiency, was preserved or became even larger. For example, the 60-W pretreated sample exhibited a high responsivity (R) of 8.41 A/W and a large specific detectivity (D^*) of 1.24 × 10¹⁴ Jones, both increasing by one order of magnitude in comparison with the untreated sample. More interestingly, the response speed was unexpectedly accelerated, which is ascribed to the rapid and direct tunneling of electrons at the M/S interface as well as to the reduction in RC time constant based on the data analysis and the underlying physical principle discussion. The treatment conditions can be further optimized to counterbalance some side effects. These findings reveal an efficient technique for comprehensively improving the performance of β-Ga₂O₃ solar-blind PDs.

Recently, monoclinic Ga₂O₃ (β-Ga₂O₃) photodetectors (PDs) have been extensively studied for various commercial and military applications due to the merits of intrinsic solar rejection, high gain, and great compactness. In this work, c-plane sapphire substrates were annealed under different temperatures in a vacuum furnace prior to the molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) of β-Ga₂O₃ thin film, which yielded a smoother surface and even a terrace-and-step-like morphology on the substrate, resulting in improved crystallinity of the epitaxial film. Accordingly, both the dark and photo currents of β-Ga₂O₃ metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) PDs were increased by the enhanced carrier mobility (μ) of the more crystalline film. However, the substrate-annealing temperature must be sufficiently high to offset the rise of the dark current and thus achieve a remarkable improvement in the photodetection properties. As a result, the PD fabricated on the 1050 °C-annealed substrate exhibited extremely high sensitivity, for example, high responsivity (R) of 54.9 A/W and large specific detectivity (D*) of 3.71 × 10¹⁴ Jones. Both parameters were increased by one order of magnitude because of the combined effects of the dramatic increase in μ and the effective reduction in defect-related recombination centers. Nevertheless, the latter also prolonged the recovery time of the PD. These findings suggest another way to develop β-Ga₂O₃ PD with extremely high sensitivity.