@misc{blevins_yang_2021, title={On optical properties and scintillation performance of emerging Ga2O3: Crystal growth, emission mechanisms and doping strategies}, volume={144}, ISSN={["1873-4227"]}, DOI={10.1016/j.materresbull.2021.111494}, abstractNote={As an emerging ultra-wide bandgap compound semiconductor, Ga2O3 has attracted rapidly growing interest due to its unique physical properties for harsh condition applications. Compared to Ga2O3’s electrical-characteristic based uses, such as power electronics, photodetectors and solar cells, a much less explored area for Ga2O3 is its promising optical properties and its related scintillation capabilities. Undoped Ga2O3 is a strong scintillator with excellent scintillation characteristics such as fast decay constants and encouraging light yield which is comparable to that of the classic Bi4Ge3O12 (BGO) scintillator. The scintillation capability of Ga2O3 can be precisely tuned via a series of approaches including systematic crystal growth control, post-growth annealing, targeted doping, and optimization of operation temperature. Here we summarize exciting progress of Ga2O3 scintillators which have been pursued over the past few years. Our efforts cover a series of growth techniques of Ga2O3 materials as well as discussion of emission mechanisms. Furthermore we dedicate a targeted portion toward the doping strategies to improve the performance of Ga2O3. A detailed analysis is provided to compare the impact of different dopants. Through these efforts, we hope to provide useful perspectives to help accelerate the development of high performance Ga2O3 scintillators.}, journal={MATERIALS RESEARCH BULLETIN}, author={Blevins, Jacob and Yang, Ge}, year={2021}, month={Dec} }
 @article{blevins_yang_2020, title={Enabling Ga2O3's neutron detection capability with boron doping and conversion layer}, volume={128}, ISSN={["1089-7550"]}, DOI={10.1063/5.0015522}, abstractNote={There is a growing necessity to develop revolutionary neutron detectors for nuclear energy, nuclear physics, medical physics, astrophysics, biological imaging, nonproliferation, and national security. The often-used Helium-3 (He-3) neutron detector is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain due to He-3 shortages. As an emerging oxide semiconductor material, Ga2O3 exhibits excellent physical properties. These physical merits enable Ga2O3’s potential as a high-performance semiconductor neutron detector for extreme condition applications. Here, two approaches are explored, i.e., applying an exterior conversion layer of boron-10 (B-10) on Ga2O3 and directly doping B-10 into Ga2O3 to demonstrate Ga2O3’s capability for neutron detection. Using Monte Carlo simulation, we show the distinct difference in neutron detection efficiency of Ga2O3 when applying direct doping of B-10 into Ga2O3 vs applying a uniform B-10 conversion layer on top of Ga2O3. Our results exhibit that the theoretically predicted maximum doping level of B-10 in Ga2O3 does not lead to the same detection efficiency as that of a simple B-10 conversion layer when detecting 480 keV gammas. Except for the most thermalized neutrons at 0.01 eV, direct doping simulations are not able to achieve comparable results to that of the conversion layer method.}, number={15}, journal={JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS}, author={Blevins, Jacob and Yang, Ge}, year={2020}, month={Oct} }