In this work, β-(AlxGa1-x)2O3 ( \(\overline{2}01\) ) epitaxial films were deposited on c-plane sapphire substrates, successfully. XRD scanning results illustrates that the prepared films maintain the crystal structure of β-Ga2O3 in a “x” value range of 0–0.45, and the crystalline quality gradually deteriorates with the increase of Al content. It is wonder that the optical bandgap does not monotonically increase with the increase of Al content, and reaches a maximum value of ~ 5.11 eV when the x value is 0.29. Further increasing x value leads to decrease of optical bandgap, which should be contributed to the enhanced absorption of defective energy levels caused by the deterioration of lattice quality. The refractive index of the prepared films under 400-nm-light can be adjusted between 1.99 and 1.88 by various Al contents. Such a refractive index difference between Ga2O3 and (AlxGa1-x)2O3 indicates that the Ga2O3/(AlxGa1-x)2O3 periodic structure is promising for the preparation of distributed Bragg reflector.