Method of choice for fabrication of high-quality ZnO-based Schottky diodes

We present a comprehensive comparison of electrical properties of differently fabricated high quality Schottky contacts on ZnO thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition. Thermally evaporated Pd/ZnO Schottky contacts exhibit ideality factors as low as 1.06 due to their high lateral homogeneity. The effective Richardson constant determined using these homogeneous contacts is (7.7 +/- 4.8) A cm(-2) K (2) close to the theoretical value of 32 A cm(-2) K (2). However, their rectification ratio is at most five orders of magnitude due to their comparably small barrier height (approximate to 0.7eV). The largest effective barrier height (1.11 eV) and rectification ratio (7 x 10(10)) was obtained for reactively sputtered PdOx/ZnO Schottky contacts. Eclipse pulsed laser deposited IrOx/ZnO Schottky contacts were found to combine very good lateral homogeneity (n approximate to 1.1), with a reasonably large barrier height (0.96 eV) and large rectification ratio (approximate to 9 orders of magnitude). Our results for differently fabricated Schottky contacts suggest that the barrier formation is highly dependent on the presence of oxygen vacancies close to the interface and the different compensation mechanisms involved. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.