Analysis of temperature dependent current-voltage and capacitance-voltage characteristics of an Au/V2O5/n-Si Schottky diode

Electronic properties of Au/V2O5/n-Si Schottky device have been investigated by temperature dependent current-voltage (I-V) and capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurements ranging from 300 K to 150 K. Ideality factor (n) and barrier height (phi) for the Schottky device were obtained from I-V characteristics as 2.04 and 0.83 eV at 300 K and 6.95 and 0.39 eV at 150 K respectively. It was observed that in presence of inhomogeneity at metal-semiconductor interface, the ideality factor increases and barrier height decreases with the decrease of temperature. The Richardson constant value was estimated as 137 A-cm(-2) -K-2 from modified Richardson plot, which is closer to the known theoretical value of n-Si where mean value of barrier height (((phi b0) over bar)), and its standard deviation (sigma(0)) were estimated using double Gaussian distribution (DGD) analysis. Different device parameters, namely, built-in potential, carrier concentration, image force lowering and depletion width were also obtained from the C-V-T measurements. First time use of V2O5 thin-film as an interfacial layer (IL) on Au/V2O5/n-Si Schottky diode was successfully explained by the thermionic emission (TE) theory. The interesting result obtained in this present work is the V2O5 thin-film reduced its conducting capability with decreasing temperature, while it shows a totally insulating behaviour below 150 K. (C) 2017 Author(s).