Comparative Study of Temperature Dependent Barrier Heights of Pd/ZnO Schottky Diodes Grown along Zn- and O-Faces

In this study, the effect of polar face on Schottky barrier diodes has been investigated. Two samples of ZnO were grown hydrothermally under similar growth conditions. The Palladium (Pd) metal contacts of area 0.78 mm2 were fabricated on both faces and were studied comprehensively using DLS-83 Deep Level Spectrometer over temperature range of 160K330K. The current-voltage (IV) measurements revealed that the ideality factor n and barrier height ϕB were strongly temperature dependent for both faces (Zn and O-face) of ZnO, indicating that the thermionic emission is not the dominant process, which showed the inhomogenity in the barrier heights of grown samples. This barrier height inhomogenity was explained by applying Gaussian distribution model. The extrapolation of the linear ϕap verses n plot to n = 1 has given a homogeneous barrier height of approximately 0.88±0.01 eV and 0.76±0.01 eV for Zn and O-faces respectively. ϕap versus 1/T plot was drawn to obtain the values of mean barrier height for Zn and O-face (0.88±0.01 eV, 0.76±0.01 eV) and standard deviation (δs) (0.015±0.001 V, 0.014±0.001 V) at zero bais respectively. The value of δs for the Zn-face is larger than O-face, showing that inhomogenity in the barrier heights is more in the sample grown along Zn-face as compared to the sample grown along O-face.