Excellent rectifying characteristics in Au/n-CdTe diodes upon exposure to rf nitrogen plasma

Gurumurthy, Suma and Bhat, HL and Kumar, Vikram (1999) Excellent rectifying characteristics in Au/n-CdTe diodes upon exposure to rf nitrogen plasma. In: Semiconductor Science and Technology, 14 (10). pp. 909-914.

PDF s91006.pdf - Published Version Restricted to Registered users only Download (148kB) | Request a copy

Abstract

Nitrogen plasma exposure (NPE) effects on indium doped bulk n-CdTe are reported here. Excellent rectifying characteristics of Au/n-CdTe Schottky diodes, with an increase in the barrier height, and large reverse breakdown voltages are observed after the plasma exposure. Surface damage is found to be absent in the plasma exposed samples. The breakdown mechanism of the heavily doped Schottky diodes is found to shift from the Zener to avalanche after the nitrogen plasma exposure, pointing to a change in the doping close to the surface which was also verified by C-V measurements. The thermal stability of the plasma exposure process is seen up to a temperature of 350 degrees C, thereby enabling the high temperature processing of the samples for device fabrication. The characteristics of the NPE diodes are stable over a year implying excellent diode quality. A plausible model based on Fermi level pinning by acceptor-like states created by plasma exposure is proposed to explain the observations.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Semiconductor Science and Technology
Publisher:	Institute of Physics
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to Institute of Physics.
Department/Centre:	Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics
Date Deposited:	19 Jul 2009 04:42
Last Modified:	19 Sep 2010 05:27
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/19327

Actions (login required)

View Item