Simulation and analysis of the current–voltage–temperature characteristics of Al/Ti/4H-SiC Schottky barrier diodes

Abstract

The current-voltage characteristics of Al/Ti/4H-SiC Schottky barrier diodes have been investigated in the 85-445 K temperature range by means of a combined numerical and analytical simulation study. Simulation results showed a good agreement with measurements in the whole explored current range from 10 μA to 10 mA. The main device electrical parameters, namely the barrier height (BH) and ideality factor, were found to be strongly temperature-dependent. In particular, the ideality factor decreases while the BH increases with increasing temperature. The observed behaviours have been successfully interpreted by using the thermionic emission theory with a triple Gaussian distribution of the BH in three different temperature ranges, i.e. 85 ⩽ ΔT 1 ⩽ 135 K, 180 ⩽ ΔT 2 ⩽ 270 K, and 315 ⩽ ΔT 3 ⩽ 445 K. The corresponding Richardson constants areand A 3 * = 173.21 A cm −2 K −2 , respectively. These values are close to the theoretical result of 146 A cm −2 K −2 expected for n-type 4H-SiC. Finally, it has been highlighted that the current flowing through the Schottky junction is also determined by the thermionic-field emission mechanism.

Barrier properties and current conduction mechanism for metal contacts to lightly and highly doped p-type 4H-SiC

“…(12). Assuming that D it is independent of the doping level, 20) it is found that the experimental f q Bp TFE for the highly doped samples are also close to the theoretical calculations (also see Fig. 9).…”

“…The abnormal behaviors from the TE model for the lightly doped samples are usually ascribed to the barrier inhomogeneities, which may be due to the surface contaminants, subsurface traps, dopant clustering, non-uniform interfacial oxide layer, active defects etc. [10][11][12][13][18][19][20][21][22] It can be speculated that some patches with their low and high local barriers may be embedded in the surrounding of uniform barrier height, 11,23) as schematically shown in Fig. 3.…”

400 °C Sensor Based on Ni/4H-SiC Schottky Diode for Reliable Temperature Monitoring in Industrial Environments

“…Die connections with nano-particle paste intermediary layer were obtained similarly with those resulting from a solid-state diffusion [25], that is, by applying pressure and heat for a specific duration. When using the silver paste, the nano-particles significantly increase contact pressure, which reduces the need for elevated temperature levels as well as the time demanded.…”

“…Among all devices fabricated on SiC (PN, PIN, JFET, etc. ), Schottky diodes are the most cost-effective and technologically mature, with considerable commercial success in power and sensing applications [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27]. Hence, due to their simple structure, very compact size and quasi-linear voltage-temperature dependence (with sensitivities exceeding 2 mV/°C), SiC Schottky diodes are excellent candidates for high-temperature monitoring in hostile industrial environments [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,18,19,20,21,22,23,24].…”

An Efficient 4H-SiC Photodiode for UV Sensing Applications

“…Although photodiodes made in 6H-SiC have been examined in earlier time studies [10], the 4H-SiC polytype has gained much more attention in different application fields in the meantime [11,12] thanks to its improved electronic properties [13,14]. 4H-SiC-based photodiodes, in particular Schottky [15,16] and avalanche devices [17][18][19], have been extensively demonstrated in the last few years; only a few examples are reported instead for p-i-n structures [20][21][22], although they are more efficient from the optical-electrical conversion point of view.…”