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New study of the abnormal behavior of the low temperature dependence of the current in inhomogeneous Schottky diode
Author(s) -
Latreche Abdelhakim,
Ouennoughi Zahir
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
international journal of numerical modelling: electronic networks, devices and fields
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.249
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1099-1204
pISSN - 0894-3370
DOI - 10.1002/jnm.2002
Subject(s) - thermionic emission , saturation current , schottky diode , current (fluid) , saturation (graph theory) , condensed matter physics , gaussian , standard deviation , diode , diffusion , diffusion current , schottky barrier , computational physics , chemistry , voltage , materials science , physics , thermodynamics , mathematics , optoelectronics , statistics , quantum mechanics , computational chemistry , combinatorics , electron
In this study, we show clearly why unexpected observations have been reported in the current–voltage curves of Schottky diodes, containing barrier inhomogeneities generated by using the analytical results based on a Gaussian distribution model of barrier heights. The Chand's calculations have shown that the current (saturation current) at low temperatures may exceed the current (saturation current) at high temperatures when the effective barrier height is calculated from an appropriate integral with integration limits −∞ and +∞. In this new study, we show that the method followed by Chand to remove these anomalies is not accurate enough. We prove that the origin of these anomalies stems from the nature of a proper function f ( φ ) that moves to the negative barrier heights and takes large value of the integral at low temperatures than at high temperatures when it has large standard deviation ( σ ) and the discrepancies are not due to the integration limits as Chand concluded. In order to obtain results consistent with the thermionic emission–diffusion theory, the standard deviation must have lower values. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.