A study on electrical properties of Au/4H-SiC Schottky diode under illumination

Abstract

Y In this work, a metal-semiconductor diode in the form of Au/4H-SiC is fabricated, and the electrical properties of this device are systematically examined under dark and different illumination intensities. To perform this, the currentvoltage (I-V) characteristics of the Schottky-type diode are analyzed at room temperature. The performance parameters such as saturation current (I-0), barrier height (Phi(B)), ideality factor (n) and series resistance (R-s) are found to be illumination dependent. The reverse biased I - V characteristics under incident light indicate high photo-sensitivity as compared to the response at forward bias. Thus, this result is investigated in detail according to both Schottky and Poole-Frenkel effects. It is found that the Poole-Frenkel mechanism is dominant in the reverse biased region. The Au/4H-SiC Schottky junction has a strong photo-current response to the different illumination intensities and transient photocurrent characteristics of the fabricated device are studied at the illumination intensities of 50 and 100 mW/cm(2). All experimental results indicate that the Au/4H-SiC Schottky diode, with a valuable response to the illumination together with change in illumination intensity, can be used for optoelectronic applications.