Ideal Schottky diodes on passivated silicon

Abstract

Because of the complicated electronic and metallurgical properties of the metal-semiconductor interface, there is much controversy about the theoretical interpretation of experimental results on Schottky barrier heights. We present a new approch of barrier height measurements on a prototypical clean, abrupt and noninteracting system consisting of mercury contacts to hydrogen-passivated silicon surfaces. The resulting barrier to p-silicon is 0.9 V, totally at variance with all results presented for silicon Schottky barriers fabricated by standard metal deposition techniques. We believe this to be the first report in the limit of noninteracting metal contacts to silicon. © 1992 The American Physical Society.