Analysis of temperature dependent electrical performance of Al/CuO/ITO Schottky barrier diode and explanation of inhomogeneous barrier heights by double Gaussian distribution

Abstract

Here temperature dependent electrical properties of two differently synthesized CuO nanoparticles (hydrothermal (CuO (H)) and reflux (CuO (R))) based Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) have been investigated. Both the materials based devices show an abnormal decrease in the ideality factor (η) and an increase in the barrier height (BH) with the increase in temperature. Experimentally obtained Richardson constant (A*) for both materials based devices show much lower values than the theoretical values. This discrepancy in A* due to the presence of inhomogeneities at the barrier height (BH) of metal-semiconductor (MS) interface has been analyzed by assuming double Gaussian distribution (GD) of the BHs.The mean BH values (ϕb0¯) for CuO (H) based devices obtained as 1.18eV and 1.07eV with standard deviation 0.18V and 0.15 V respectively which are less than the values of its counterpart. The obtained values of A* from the modified plot for both SBDs are in close agreement with the theoretical values. This study portrays a successful explanation of temperature dependent current-voltage characteristics of these two SBDs assuming double GD of the BHs.