| AVS 56th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Electronic Materials and Processing | Wednesday Sessions |
| Session EM-WeA |
| Session: | Contacts, Interfaces, and Defects in Semiconductors |
| Presenter: | S.E. Mohney, Pennsylvania State University |
| Authors: | S.E. Mohney, Pennsylvania State University K. Sarpatwari, Pennsylvania State University O.O. Awadelkarim, Pennsylvania State University N.S. Dellas, Pennsylvania State University |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
A combination of simulations and experiments often provides a powerful approach to address scientific and engineering problems. In this presentation, we describe two examples of research on contacts to semiconductors in which we use simulations to develop methods to analyze data collected from Schottky barrier contacts. In the first example, we present an approach to accurately extract the Schottky barrier height from an axial contact to a semiconductor nanowire. Modification of the method usually used to analyze current-voltage (I-V) data from microscale planar Schottky diodes is necessary because of the influence of the semiconductor nanowire surface adjacent to the Schottky barrier contact. Band-bending at this surface influences the shape of the depletion region at the metal/semiconductor interface and must be controlled. We accomplish this control with a wrap-around gate. By analyzing I-V data generated using a commercial device simulator, we identify a method to treat the data to accurately extract the Schottky barrier height. Using the same approach that worked well for the simulated data, we next analyze Schottky barrier contacts to silicon nanowires that we nanofabricated with wrap-around gates. In another investigation, we examine approaches to extract the Richardson constant from planar Schottky barrier contacts that contain nanoscale inhomogeneities. Using Tung’s model for inhomogeneous Schottky barrier contacts, we generate simulated I-V data for contacts with inhomogeneities of different sizes, densities, and departures from the homogeneous background barrier height. Then we compare various published approaches for extracting the Richardson constant, identifying their strengths and weaknesses. This section of the presentation concludes with the recommendation of a new approach for treating experimental data, and the approach is demonstrated for Schottky barrier contacts to wide band gap semiconductors.