Effect of layer thickness on electrical characterization of Ag/Si schottky diode fabricated by thermal evaporation technique

In this study, three Ag/Si schottky diode have been fabricated by depositing of Silver (Ag) layer with three different thickness 300, 360 and 400 nm on p-Si substrate with (100) orientation by thermal evaporation technique and depositing of Aluminum (Al) layer with 120 nm thickness on back of substrates by direct current sputtering technique. The main parameters of diode like ideality factor (n), series resistance (Rs) and potential barrier (Φb) are calculated by using two methods of current-voltage measurements and cheung functions. The ideality factor and potential barrier for three thickness 300, 360 and 400 nm obtained by using I-V measurements respectively 3.8, 0.63 eV, 2.058, 0.70 eV and 1.01, 0.73 eV. Also these calculated by using cheung functions respectively 3.46, 0.63 eV, 2.42, 0.70 eV and 0.73, 0.82 eV. The series resistance values obtained by using cheung functions for three thickness 300, 360 and 400 nm respectively 97, 53 and 10.2 Ω. The results obtained from cheung functions and analysis of I-V measurements showed that by increasing layer thickness, the potential barrier of schottky diode increase and the series resistance decrease that leads to the formation of more ideal diode.