Analysis of forward and reverse biased current–voltage characteristics of Al/Al₂O₃/n-Si Schottky diode with atomic layer deposited Al₂O₃ thin film interlayer

The dark current–voltage (\(I{-}V\)) characteristics of Al/Al₂O₃/n-Si Schottky diode are investigated in a wide temperature range of 260–360 K. The diode shows four orders of magnitude rectification. In forward and reverse bias regions, the temperature-dependent \(I{-}V\) characteristics are detailed in terms of diode parameters and dominant conduction mechanisms. Due to the existence of Al₂O₃ film layer and series resistance in the diode structure, current flow under the forward bias is observed in a deviation from pure exponential characteristics. The diode parameters are estimated from thermionic emission model with non-unity ideality factor, and this non-ideal behavior is resulted in the ideality factors greater than two. In addition to these values, zero-bias barrier height is found to be strongly temperature dependent, and this variation indicates a presence of inhomogeneties in the barrier according to Gaussian distribution (GD) approximation. This fact is investigated plotting characteristic plot of this model and by extracting mean barrier height with its standard deviation. In order to complete the work on the forward I–V region, the carrier transport characteristics of the diode are explained on the basis of thermionic emission mechanism with a GD of the harrier heights. In accordance with this approximation, the conventional Richardson plot exhibits non-linearity behavior and modified current relation based on GD model is used to calculate mean barrier height and Richardson constant. In addition, the values of parasitic resistances are determined using Ohm’s law as a function of temperature for all bias voltage spectra. In the reverse bias region, Poole–Frenkel effect is found to be dominant on the conduction associated with the barrier lowering, and barrier height in the emission process from the trapped states, and high-frequency dielectric constant of Al₂O₃ film layer is calculated.