Fabrication, structural and electrical characterization of AlNi2Si based heterojunction grown by LPE

This work elucidates the applicability for Liquid-Phase Epitaxy (LPE) to grow epilayers of AlNi2Si on single crystalline Si with a good crystalline quality and low series resistance. Surface morphology and crystalline structural characteristics of the heterojunction were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD), respectively. Temperature dependence of the current–voltage (I–V) characteristics is studied to elucidate the predominant conduction mechanism in the temperature range 305–370 K. Heterojunction parameters such as ideality factor, series resistance, barrier height show temperature dependence in the desired temperature range. Cheung functions are applied for determination the heterojunction parameters and compared with each other. Temperature dependence of capacitance–voltage (C–V) characteristics was considered. The built-in potential, net carrier concentration, maximum barrier height, maximum barrier field and the width of the depletion region obtained from the C–V measurements were studied as a function of temperature.