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I-V-T measurements on GaAs/AlGaAs heterojunctions interpreted on the basis of thermally assistedtunneling
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2000
Abstract
I-V-T data is routinely used to determine the conduction band discontinuity in heterojunction
structures. In the present paper, capacitance-voltage and current-voltage-temperature
measurements performed on AlGaAs/GaAs isotype heterojunctions are presented and analysed
over a wide temperature range (77 K-300 K). Considering thermionic emission alone when
analysing I-V-T data resulted in several problems. The Richardson plot $[\ln(J_0/T^2) vs. 1/T]$,
in particular while suggesting that the thermally activated process is of importance in the overall
conduction mechanism, shows two distinct linear regions of different slope over two temperature
ranges. Also the derived activation energies and hence the band discontinuity from I-V-T data is
very much lower than the value obtained from C-V profiling which is in very good agreement with
values routinely published in literature. However, the results obtained from both I-V-T and C-V
data are reconciled when considering a simple analytical expression for the current based on the
assumption that thermally assisted tunneling is the dominant current generating mechanism over
most of the temperature range.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- The European Physical Journal - Applied Physics , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , February 2000 , pp. 131 - 136
- Copyright
- © EDP Sciences, 2000
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