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The current-voltage (I-V ) characteristics of Cd/p-GaTe Schottky barrier diodes were measured in the temperature range 90-330 K. The apparent barrier height and the ideality factor derived by using thermionic emission (TE) theory were found to be strongly temperature dependent. Evaluating forward I-V data reveals a decrease of zero-bias barrier height ( b0 ) but an increase of ideality factor (n) with decrease in temperature, and these changes are more pronounced below 150 K. The conventional Richardson plot exhibits nonlinearity below 150 K with the linear portion corresponding to an activation energy of 0.52 eV. The value of effective Richardson constant (A * ) turns out to be 6.74 × 10 −2 A K −2 cm −2 against the theoretical value of 119.4 A K −2 cm −2 . It is demonstrated that the findings cannot be explained on the basis of tunnelling and image force lowering effects. Also, the concept of the flat-band barrier height f b fails to account for the temperature dependence of the diode parameters. Finally, it is demonstrated that these anomalies result due to the barrier height inhomogeneities prevailing at the metal-semiconductor interface. The inhomogeneities are considered to have Gaussian distribution with a mean barrier height of ¯ b0 = 0.886 eV and a standard deviation of σ s0 = 0.091 eV at zero bias. Furthermore, the mean barrier height and the Richardson constant values were obtained as 0.875 eV and 62.2 A K −2 cm −2 , respectively, by means of the modified Richardson plot, ln(J 0 /T 2 ) − q 2 σ 2 s0 /2k 2 T 2 versus 1000/T. Hence, it has been concluded that the temperature dependence of the I -V characteristics of the Schottky barrier on p-type GaTe can be successfully explained on the basis of TE mechanism with Gaussian distribution of the barrier heights.

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