An investigation into current- voltage (I-V) characteristics of Au/Si3N4/n-Si (MIS)structures

In the present work, we investigated the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of Au/Si3N4/n-Si (MIS) Schottky diode in the temperature range of 160-400 K. By using the thermionic emission (TE) theory, the forward bias I-V characteristics were analyzed to estimate the MIS Schottky diode parameters. The semi-logarithmic lnI-V characteristics based on the TE mechanism showed a decrease in the ideality factor (n) and an increase in the zero-bias barrier height (?Bo) with an increasing temperature. The values of n and ?Bo were changed from 9,50 and 0,34 eV (at 160 K) to 3,43 and 0,74 eV (at 400 K), respectively. Furthermore, the temperature dependence of energy distribution of interface states (Nss) was obtained from the forward bias I-V measurements by taking the bias dependence effective barrier height into account. Also, from ? Bo versus q/2kT plot was obtained the values of the mean barrier height and standard deviation at zero bias as 0,999 eV and 0,137 V for, respectively, Thus, from the modified [ln(Io/T2)-q2 ? o2/2k2T2] versus q/kT plot was obtained the values of and A* as 0,992 eV and 108,228 Acm-2K-2, respectively.