Evaluation of lateral barrier height of inhomogeneous photolithography-fabricated Au/n-GaAs Schottky barrier diodes from 80 K to 320 K

In order to evaluate current conduction mechanism in the Au/n-GaAs Schottky barrier diode (SBD) some electrical parameters such as the zero-bias barrier height (BH) Φbo(I–V) and ideality factor (n) were obtained from the forward bias current–voltage (I–V) characteristics in wide temperature range of 80–320 K by steps of 10 K. By using the thermionic emission (TE) theory, the Φbo(I–V) and n were found to depend strongly on temperature, and the n decreases with increasing temperature while the Φbo(I–V) increases. The values of Φbo and n ranged from 0.600 eV and 1.51(80 K) to 0.816 eV and 1.087 (320 K), respectively. Such behavior of Φbo and n is attributed to Schottky barrier inhomogeneities by assuming a Gaussian distribution (GD) of BHs at Au/n-GaAs interface. In the calculations, the electrical parameters of the experimental forward bias I–V characteristics of the Au/n-GaAs SBD with the homogeneity in the 80–320 K range have been explained by means of the TE, considering GD of BH with linear bias dependence.