The current–voltage and capacitance–voltage characteristics at high temperatures of Au Schottky contact to n-type GaAs

• The electronic parameters of the diode under temperature were investigated.
• The barrier heights have a Gaussian distribution.
• Au/n-GaAs diode exhibits a rectification behavior.

We have investigated the temperature-dependent current–voltage (I–V) and capacitance–voltage (C–V) characteristics of Au/n-GaAs Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) in the temperature range of 280–415 K. The barrier height for the Au/n-type GaAs SBDs from the I–V and C–V characteristics have varied from 0.901 eV to 0.963 eV (I–V) and 1.234 eV to 0.967 eV (C–V), and the ideality factor (n) from 1.45 to 1.69 in the temperature range 280–415 K. The conventional Richardson plots are found to be linear in the temperature range measured. Both the ln(I0/T2) versus (kT)−1 and ln(I0/T2) versus (nkT)−1 plots gives a straight line corresponding to activation energies 0.773 eV and 0.870 eV, respectively. A Φb0 versus 1/T   plot was drawn to obtain evidence of a Gaussian distribution of the BHs, and values of Φ¯b0 = 1.071 eV and σ0 = 0.094 V for the mean BH and zero-bias standard deviation have been obtained from this plot.

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