Influence of Ta2O5 Interfacial Oxide Layer Thickness on Electronic Parameters of Al/Ta2O5/p-Si/Al Heterostructure

We describe the impact of Ta2O5 interfacial oxide layer thickness (ranging from 100-350 nm) on electrical and structural properties of Al/Ta2O5/p-Si/Al Metal-Insulator-Semiconductor (MIS) Schottky barrier diodes using RF magnetron sputtering. We studied the Schottky barrier device parameters such as ideality factor, barrier height and series resistance and are evaluated from current-voltage (I-V) measurements. The barrier height and ideality factor values are significantly varying with Ta2O5 oxide layer thickness and found to be 0.58 eV, 2.35, 0.71 eV, 2.10 and 0.78 eV, 1.87 for 20, 40 and 60 nm, respectively. It was noticed that the calculated barrier height and ideality values for this prepared Al/Ta2O5/p-Si/Al MIS Schottky barrier diode were greatly improved than those conventional metal-semiconductor (MS) Schottky diodes. The XRD studies revealed that the 100-nm thickness film exhibited poor crystallinity whereas 200 and 350 nm thickness films showed improved crystallinity with orthorhombic phase of -Ta2O5. The presence of this orthorhombic phase of -Ta2O5 is confirmed with FTIR studies. To explore the structural transformations in Ta2O5 films with varying thicknesses, Raman spectroscopy was utilized. In addition, the improvement in Schottky diode parameters was correlated with the enhanced crystallinity noticed in XRD studies