Systematic control of Schottky barrier height by partisan interlayers

The relationship between the starting surface structure and the Schottky barrier height (SBH) in metal-silicon systems has been investigated to explore the possibility of modifying the interface dipole through the insertion of an inorganic interface layer. A systematic and comprehensible way to perform this modification has been introduced as a "partisan interlayer" method and was extensively studied for a variety of interlayer elements, along with several choices for the metal. Employing elements with a larger electronegativity than that of silicon, a monolayer of As, S, or Cl was deposited on Si surfaces and processed to form stable surface structures. The electron affinities of these surfaces were measured by Kelvin probe and found to increase significantly from the clean surface, consistent with the expected charge transfer from Si to the adsorbates and also in agreement with results of ab initio density functional theory calculations. Subsequent deposition of metal on these adsorbate terminated semiconductor (ATS) surfaces led to the fabrication of metastable interface structures with the SBH successfully and significantly modified in a predictable manner from the clean Si results. The chemical stability of these surfaces that weakens the interaction with the deposited metal, likely leads to the preservation of electric dipole from such partisan interlayers. The partisan interlayer method was found to work particularly well with As-terminated Si(111) surface, on which a interface behavior parameter exceeding 0.50 was found. This exceeded the S-parameter usually observed for covalent semiconductors such as Si, ∼ 0.1, and highlighted a major reason for the adjustability of the SBH by the PI method. The SBH of all interfaces studied in this work was inhomogeneous. Making use of the theory of electronic transport through inhomogeneous SBH and temperature-dependent measurements, the extent of the SBH nonuniformity was routinely characterized from the Schottky diodes. The largest adjustment in the SBH was observed for Au on S-terminated Si(100), where the n-type junction became nearly perfectly ohmic. It was demonstrated, for the first time, that quantitative information on the distribution of the SBH and the lateral size of conduction patches ("hot spots") could still be obtained from ohmic junctions. The physical basis for these analyses and the special experimental conditions which enabled these analyses were carefully explained. The implications of these results for SBH control of MS systems in general and the understanding of the formation of SBH in general are also discussed.