Gallium oxide with a corundum structure ({\alpha}-Ga2O3) has recently attracted great attention in view of electronic and photonic applications due to its unique properties including a wide band gap exceeding that of the most stable beta phase (\b{eta}-Ga2O3). However, the lower thermal stability of the {\alpha}-phase at ambient conditions in comparison with the \b{eta}-phase requires careful investigation of its resistance to other external influences such as ion irradiation, ion doping, etc. In this work, the structural changes under the action of Al+ ion irradiation have been investigated for a polymorphic gallium oxide layers grown by hydride vapor phase epitaxy on c-plane sapphire and consisting predominantly of {\alpha}-phase with inclusions of {\alpha}(\k{appa})-phase. It is established by the X-ray diffraction technique that inclusions of {\alpha}(\k{appa})-phase in the irradiated layer undergo the expansion along the normal to the substrate surface, while there is no a noticeable deformation for the {\alpha}-phase. This speaks in favor of the different radiation tolerance of various Ga2O3 polymorphs, especially the higher radiation tolerance of the {\alpha}-phase. This fact should be taken into account when utilizing ion implantation to modify gallium oxide properties in terms of development of efficient doping strategies.
@article{arxiv.2103.00317,
title = {Ion-Beam Modification of Metastable Gallium Oxide Polymorphs},
author = {D. I. Tetelbaum and A. A. Nikolskaya and D. S. Korolev and A. I. Belov and V. N. Trushin and Yu. A. Dudin and A. N. Mikhaylov and A. I. Pechnikov and M. P. Scheglov and V. I. Nikolaev and D. Gogova},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.00317},
year = {2021}
}