P-Si nanowires/n-ZnO thin film based core-shell heterojunction diodes with improved effective richardson constant

Abstract

This paper reports the temperature dependent electrical parameters of p-Silicon nanowires (SiNWs)/n-ZnO thin film based core-shell heterojunction diodes fabricated by conformally deposited zinc oxide (ZnO) by atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique on metal-assisted chemically etched SiNWs. The temperature-dependent current-voltage characteristics of the device have been estimated using the modified thermionic emission model in which a Gaussian distributed barrier height function is assumed to include the effects of barrier inhomogeneity phenomenon at the p-SiNW /n-ZnO heterojunction interface. Various parameters such as the turn-on voltage, ideality factor (η), barrier height (Φb) and reverse saturation current are estimated over the operating temperature range of 303 K to 423 K of the diode. The value of the Richardson constant is observed to be largely changed from an impractical value of 1.989×10-6 A cm-2 K-2 to a realistic value of 36.6 A cm-2 K-2 once the barrier inhogeneity phenomenon is taken into consideration in the analysis. The estimated value of the Richardson constant is believed to be the best among the reported results. The study is also believed to be the first in case of p-SiNWs/n-ZnO core-shell heterojunction diodes. Copyright © 2014 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved.