Evaluation of lateral barrier height of inhomogeneous photolithography-fabricated Au/n-GaAs Schottky barrier diodes from 80 K to 320 K

Abstract

In order to evaluate current conduction mechanism in the Au/n-GaAs Schottky barrier diode (SBD) some electrical parameters such as the zero-bias barrier height (BH) Phi(bo)(I-V) and ideality factor (n) were obtained from the forward bias current-voltage (I-V) characteristics in wide temperature range of 80-320 K by steps of 10K. By using the thermionic emission (TE) theory, the Phi(bo)(I-V) and n were found to depend strongly on temperature, and the n decreases with increasing temperature while the Phi(bo)(I-V) increases. The values of Phi(bo) and n ranged from 0.600 eV and 1.51(80 K) to 0.816 eV and 1.087 (320 K), respectively. Such behavior of Phi(bo) and n is attributed to Schottky barrier inhomogeneities by assuming a Gaussian distribution (GD) of BHs at Au/n-GaAs interface. In the calculations, the electrical parameters of the experimental forward bias I-V characteristics of the Au/n-GaAs SBD with the homogeneity in the 80-320 K range have been explained by means of the TE, considering GD of BH with linear bias dependence. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.