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

We have computed the homogeneous barrier height (BH) of Au/n-Si Schottky diodes (SDs). Thereby, Au/n-Si/AuSb 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. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.