Determination of current transport characteristics in Au-Cu/CuO/n-Si Schottky diodes.

In this study, the material properties of CuO thin films fabricated by sputtering technique and electrical properties of CuO/n-Si structure were reported. Temperature-dependent current-voltage (I-V) measurement was carried out to determine the detail electrical characteristics of this structure. The anomaly in thermionic emission (TE) model related to barrier height inhomogeneity at the interface was obtained from the forward bias I-V analysis. The current transport mechanism at the junction was determined under the assumption of TE with Gaussian distribution of barrier height. In this analysis, standard deviation and mean zero bias barrier height were evaluated as 0.176 and 1.48 eV, respectively. Depending on the change in the diode parameters with temperature, Richardson constant was recalculated as 110.20 Acm−2K−2 with the help of modified Richardson plot. In addition, density of states at the interface were determined by using the forward bias I-V results. • CuO films were coated onto glass and n-type silicon substrates by RF magnetron sputtering technique. • Structural properties of CuO layer were determined via XRD, SEM and EDX measurements. • Electrical properties of Au-Cu/CuO/n-Si structure were analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]