Reducing Schottky barrier height for Fe/n-GaAs junction by inserting thin GaOx layer

We investigated the effect of thin GaOx insertion layers on the Schottky barrier height phi(B) for Fe/n-GaAs junctions. The value of phi(B) showed a remarkable decrease from 0.84 down to 0.56 eV with increasing GaOx thickness up to 2.0 nm. Large suppression of phi(B) is of greater advantage than using other oxide materials for achieving low contact resistance of the emitter/detector electrodes, which is the key to developing high-performance GaAs-based spintronics devices. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3535326]