Temperature dependence of current transport in Al/Al 2O 3 nanocomposite thin films

In this work, Al/Al 2O 3 nanocomposite thin film is deposited on Si substrate by radio frequency sputtering to form a metal-insulator-semiconductor structure. It is found that the current conduction at low fields is greatly enhanced with temperature. The current increase can be attributed to the decrease in the tunneling resistance and/or the formation of some tunneling paths due to the release of some measurement-induced charges trapped in the thin film as a result of increase in the temperature. The current conduction evolves with a trend toward a three-dimensional transport as the temperature increases. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.published_or_final_versio