Negative Differential Resistance of n-ZnO Nanorods/p-degenerated Diamond Heterojunction at High Temperatures.

Dandan Sang,Qinglin Wang,Bingyuan Zhang,Feng Ke,Jiaoli Liu,Bo Liu,Xiaofeng Wang,Hongdong Li,Wenjun Wang,Dong Zhang,Haiquan Hu

doi:10.3389/fchem.2020.00531

Abstract

In the present study, an n-ZnO nanorods (NRs)/p-degenerated diamond tunneling diode was investigated with regards to its temperature-dependent negative differential resistance (NDR) properties and carrier tunneling injection behaviors. The fabricated heterojunction demonstrated NDR phenomena at 20 and 80°C. However, these effects disappeared followed by the occurrence of rectification characteristics at 120°C. At higher temperatures, the forward current was increased, and the turn-on voltage and peak-to-valley current ratio (PVCR) were reduced. In addition, the underlying mechanisms of carrier tunneling conduction at different temperature and bias voltages were analyzed through schematic energy band diagrams and semiconductor theoretical models. High-temperature NDR properties of the n-ZnO NRs/p-degenerated diamond heterojunction can extend the applications of resistive switching and resonant tunneling diodes, especially in high-temperature, and high-power environments.

Highlights

Negative differential resistance (NDR) is a non-linear carrier transport phenomenon, whereby the electrical current decreases with increasing bias voltage
We aimed to investigate the temperaturedependent NDR performance of n-zinc oxide (ZnO) NRs/p-degenerated diamond tunneling
The results demonstrate an obvious tunneling diode behavior with NDR phenomena at 20 and 80◦C

Summary

Introduction

Negative differential resistance (NDR) is a non-linear carrier transport phenomenon, whereby the electrical current decreases with increasing bias voltage. Due to its remarkable carrier transport features, NDR has a large potential for device applications, such as resistive switching, logic devices, and oscillators (Malik et al, 2018). Several materials, such as biological molecules (Peng et al, 2009), organic crystal (Yang et al, 2009; Tonouchi et al, 2017), metal-oxide heterojunctions (Ito et al, 2007), and semiconductor quantum wells (Shin and Kim, 2015) have been exploited for NDR devices. Zinc oxide (ZnO) has wide application prospects in the field of optoelectronics owing to its wide bandgap, high exciton binding energy, and unintentionally doped n-type semiconductor (Wang et al, 2014b; Sang et al, 2016; Chang et al, 2018).

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Conclusion