A generalized Norde plot for reverse biased Schottky contacts

Abstract

When a metal makes intimate contact with a semiconductor material, a Schottky barrier may be created. The Schottky contact has many important applications in the integrated circuit (IC) electronics field. The parameters of such contacts can be determined from their current-voltage (I–V) characteristics. The literature contains many proposals for extracting the contact parameters using graphical methods. However, such methods are generally applicable only to contacts with a forward bias, whereas many Schottky contacts actually operate under a reverse bias. Accordingly, the present study proposed a generalized reverse current-voltage (I–V) plot which enables the series resistance, barrier height, and ideality factor of a reverse biased Schottky contact to be extracted from a single set of I–V measurements. A theoretical derivation of the proposed approach was presented and a series of validation tests were then performed. The results show that the proposed method is capable of extracting reliable estimates of the contact parameters even in the presence of experimental noise.

Keywords

semiconductor materials / integrated circuits / electric contacts / reverse bias / Schottky barriers

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