Pressure Dependence of III-V Schottky Barriers: A Critical Test of Theories for Fermi Level Pinning

The pressure-induced changes in the Schottky barrier height of Pt/GaAs and Au/GaAs are studied with ab initio electronic structure calculations. We show that the pressure dependence of the Schottky barrier offers a critical test of competing models of Schottky barrier pinning. We find that the pressure dependence of Pt/GaAs Schottky barriers with As antisite defects near the interface agrees well with experiment, and that the agreement closely tracks both the measured and calculated pressure dependence of the bulk As antisite. In contrast, poor agreement is found for ideal interfaces in which defects are not included.