Forward Current Transport Mechanism of Cu Schottky Barrier Formed on n-type Ge Wafer

We fabricated the Cu Schottky contact on an n-type Ge wafer and investigated the forward bias current-voltage (I-V) characteristics in the temperature range of 100~300 K. The zero bias barrier height and ideality factor were determined based on the thermionic emission (TE) model. The barrier height increased and the ideality factor decreased with increasing temperature. Such temperature dependence of the barrier height and the ideality factor was associated with spatially inhomogeneous Schottky barriers. A notable deviation from the theoretical Richardson constant (140.0 Acm^-2K^-2 for n-Ge) on the conventional Richardson plot was alleviated by using the modified Richardson plot, which yielded the Richardson constant of 392.5 Acm^-2K^-2. Finally, we applied the theory of space-charge-limitedcurrent (SCLC) transport to the high forward bias region to find the density of localized defect states (N_t), which was determined to be 1.46 × 10¹² eV^-1cm^-3.