Experimental determination of the laterally homogeneous barrier height of Au/ n-Si Schottky barrier diodes

Abstract

We have computed the homogeneous barrier height (BH) of Au/ n-Si Schottky diodes (SDs). Thereby, Au/ n-Si/Au–Sb SDs (24 dots) have identically been prepared, and the effective BHs and ideality factors of these diodes have been calculated from their experimental forward bias current–voltage ( I– V) and reverse bias capacitance–voltage ( C– V) characteristics. The BH for the Au/ n-Si/Au–Sb diodes from the I– V characteristics varied from 0.789 to 0.819 eV, the ideality factor n varied from 1.051 to 1.179, and the BH from C −2– V characteristics varied from 0.801 to 0.851 eV. The Gaussian fits of he experimental Schottky BH distributions obtained from the C −2– V and I– V characteristics have yielded a mean BH values of 0.808 and 0.809 eV, respectively, that are in close agreement with value of about 0.805 eV predicted by metal-induced gap states (MIGS) and chemical electronegativity concepts for Au/ n-Si SDs. Furthermore, the lateral homogeneous BH value of approximately 0.834 eV were also computed from the extrapolation of the linear plot of experimental BHs versus ideality factors.