Current–voltage behaviour of Schottky diodes fabricated on p-type silicon for radiation hard detectors

Current–voltage (I–V) measurements were carried out on Schottky diodes fabricated on undoped and on metal-doped p-type silicon. The metals used are gold, platinum, erbium and niobium. The I–V data were used to extract the saturation current, the ideality factor and the Schottky barrier height for each of the five diodes. These parameters were correlated to the defect levels generated by the metals in silicon. The results show that in all cases the silicon has become relaxation-like after doping since the device current is Ohmic. This is in agreement with the existence of the midgap defect in all the doped devices as compiled from the literature. Such metal doped (or relaxation) devices have been found to perform better as radiation-hard particle detectors.