Effect of Ti Induced Chemical Inhomogeneity on Crystal Structure, Electronic Structure and Optical Properties of Wide Band Gap Ga2O3

Tailoring the optical and electronic properties of wide band gap β-Ga2O3 has been of tremendous importance to utilize the full potential of the material in current and emerging technological applications in electronics, optics and optoelectronics. In the present work, we report the effect of Ti dopant insolubility driven chemical inhomogeneity on the structural, morphological, chemical bonding, electronic structure and band gap red shift in Ga2O3 polycrystalline compounds. Ga2-2xTixO3 (GTO) (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.20) compounds were synthesized using conventional high temperature solid state reaction route under variable calcination temperatures (1050-1250 °C) while sintering was performed at 1350 °C. X-ray diffraction analysis of GTO samples reveal that the formation of single phase compounds occur only at a very lower concentration of Ti doping (<5 at%), whereas higher Ti doping results in composite formation with a significant undissolved TiO2 rutile phase. However, in sintered samples, fraction of undissolved ruti...