Mechanism of Carrier Transport in n-Type β-FeSi₂/Intrinsic Si/p-Type Si Heterojunctions

Preparation of n-type β-FeSi2/intrinsic Si/p-type Si heterojunctions was accomplished by facing-target direct-current sputtering (FTDCS) and measuring their current-voltage characteristic curves at low temperatures ranging from 300 K down to 50 K. A mechanism of carrier transport in the fabricated heterojunctions was investigated based on thermionic emission theory. According to this theory, the ideality factor was calculated from the slope of the linear part of the forward lnJ-V plot. The ideality factor was 1.12 at 300 K and increased to 1.99 at 225 K. The estimated ideality factor implied that a recombination process was the predominant mechanism of carrier transport. When the temperatures decreased below 225 K, the ideality factor was estimated to be higher than two and parameter A was estimated to be constant. The obtained results implied that the mechanism of carrier transport was governed by a trap-assisted multi-step tunneling process. At high forward bias voltage, the predominant mechanism of carrier transport was changed into a space charge limit current process.