Correlation between phonon and impurity scatterings, potential fluctuations and leakage conduction of graphene/n-type Si Schottky diodes

A correlation between the temperature-dependent leakage conduction, phonon and impurity scatterings and potential fluctuations of graphene/n-type Si Schottky diodes is identified. For applying a sufficiently high reverse-bias voltage, the significantly increase in the leakage current density with voltage at low temperature is mainly the result of graphene's Fermi-energy shifts. However, the high-field saturating leakage current is observed at high temperature. This is because of the competition among the phonon and impurity scatterings. In the graphene film transferred onto the n-type Si substrate, the Femi energy level is lower and the phonon coupling is stronger, giving a stronger dependence in the carrier velocity with temperature and a weaker dependence in the leakage current density with reserve-bias voltage.