Rectification properties of nanocrystalline diamond/silicon p-n heterojunction diodes

Abstract

Carrier transport mechanism in n-type nanocrystalline diamond (NCD)/p-type Si heterojunction diodes prepared by microwave plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition is studied in a temperature range of room temperature to 473 K. Current-voltage measurements show at most three orders of magnitude of rectification at ±20 V of biasing and room temperature, depending upon the deposition temperature. The current-voltage characteristics are described with the high ideality factor and the low current injection barrier due to the disordered NCD/Si heterojunction interface, mainly associated with grain boundaries in the NCD film. The Arrhenius plots of the currents reveal that the thermal excitation of carriers limits the conduction, and the apparent activation energy decreases drastically upon the bias voltage change from reverse to forward. The current injection mechanism at the interface is explained along the predicted energy-band diagrams, such that the major carriers from the defect states of the NCD are injected into the conduction band of the Si by forward biasing.

Improved Electrical Transport and Electroluminescence Properties of p-ZnO/n-Si Heterojunction via Introduction of Patterned SiO2 Intermediate Layer

“…In addition, the variation of ln I 0 with the reciprocal of the temperature is plotted in Figure c; a nearly linear relation suggests that thermionic emission is the dominant conduction mechanism at low voltage. The activation energy ( E a ) for carriers can be derived from the slope of the linear fitted line by assuming an Arrhenius-type relation I = I 0 exp­[− E a /( kT )] . The obtained value of E a in the region (294–393 K) is 0.15 eV.…”

“…In addition, the variation of ln I 0 with the reciprocal of the temperature is plotted in Figure 3c; a nearly linear relation suggests that thermionic emission is the dominant conduction mechanism at low voltage. The activation energy (E a ) for carriers can be derived from the slope of the linear fitted line by assuming an Arrhenius-type relation 23 The obtained value of E a in the region (294−393 K) is 0.15 eV. Since the Arrhenius behavior is a characteristic feature of multistep tunneling model, we therefore consider that some shallow defect levels localized below the bottom of conduction band of ZnO are likely to assist the multitrapping tunneling mechanism through electrons capture and its re-emission toward n-Si side.…”

Computationally assessing diamond as an ultrafast pulse shaper for high-power ultrawideband radar

“…Technologically, a canonical vertical p-i-n diamond DAS and DSRD n + layers can be obtained through fabricating a so-called merged diode (Kubovic et al, 2007), depositing bandgapmatched n-type AlGaN alloy or high-conductivity n-type Frontiers in Carbon frontiersin.org nanocrystalline diamond (NCD) (Nikhar et al, 2020). The last NCD-based strategy was successfully implemented to fabricate high quality rectifying p-n junctions where n-type NCD was deposited on p-type single crystal diamond (Kohn et al, 2006), SiC (Goto et al, 2014) and even Si (Teii and Ikeda, 2013). Because the n + NCD layer only serves as a charge collector, it must have low resistance through high carrier concentration and not necessarily through retaining the excellent transport properties of single crystal diamond.…”

A Review on Optoelectronical Properties of Non-Metal Oxide/Diamond-Based p-n Heterojunction

“…This n-type NCD/p-type Si heterojunction diode was fabricated by microwave (MW) plasma enhanced CVD, and its electrical transport characteristic were studied by Kungen et al At the temperature up to 473 K, the rectification characteristics of the reverse bias area and forward bias area were investigated to deepen the understanding of the carrier transport principle according to the forecast band Chart. The disordered amorphous/Si heterostructure interface is mainly related to the grain boundaries in amorphous films ( Figure 10 ) [ 29 ]. The high ideal coefficient and small current injection barrier was used to describe the current-voltage characteristics.…”