Ni/SiC–6H Schottky Barrier Diode interfacial states characterization related to temperature

•This article is dealing with the evaluation of the mean interfacial states density of a Ni/SiC–6H Schottky Barrier Diode related to temperature. It appears a phenomenon of two barriers materializing one high diode and one low one. The other conclusion is that the interfacial states are diminishing when temperature is increasing.•This article has not, also, been published previously, is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, and its publication is approved by all authors.•The article has been correctly and thoroughly inspected and revised according to the reviewers’ recommendations.

This study presents a Ni/SiC–6H Schottky Barrier Diode (SBD) characterization at different temperatures going from 77 K to 450 K. The electronic properties of this diode were reported by the analysis of its C(VG) and I(VG) characteristics as a function of temperature.At low temperature when T < 100 K the high part ideality factors nH were close to 2 showing that the conduction is dominated by the generation–recombination at deep centers. Also, the values of low part ideality factor nL varied from 2.69 down to 1.89. These values were also much closer to 2, showing that the conduction mechanism was then dominated by a tunneling current assisted by default.The mean interfacial states density Ds(mean) decreased with increasing temperature from 1.2×1013 eV−1 cm−2 to 6.3 × 1012 eV−1 cm−2. This reducing appeared to be due to the restructuring and rearrangement which occurs under molecules thermal activation within the Ni/SiC–6H metal/semiconductor interface.