Peculiarities of current transport in boron-doped diamond Schottky diodes with hysteresis in current–voltage characteristics

The paper studies peculiarities of current transport in Au/Pt/Ni/diamond Schottky diodes with the hysteresis in current–voltage (I-V) characteristics and the nonlinear dependence of the barrier height φb on the applied voltage and proposes a method for determining basic parameters. Lateral diode structures were processed on boron-doped HPHT-diamond grown in the Fe-Al-B-C system and demonstrated barrier I-V characteristics with the exponential growth of the forward current of about eight orders of magnitude. It is shown that the voltage-dependent barrier height and hysteresis of the current-voltage characteristics can be explained by the presence of a thin dielectric gap at the metal-semiconductor interface and deep levels with lifetimes of the order of tens of seconds or more. Recharging of deep levels can significantly affect the parameters of the current-voltage characteristics. Three distinct regions were revealed. Excess current at zero voltage (region I) is related to deep-level recharge. Within regions II and III linear dependence of the φb on the applied voltage was observed. A linear dependence of the φb is related to the thermionic-field emission mechanism of current transport. Analysis of the temperature dependence I-V characteristics, capacitance-voltage (С-V) as well as frequency-capacitance (C-f) characteristics of arrays of HPHT diamond Schottky diodes yields information on the distribution of macro-defects, the state of the surface, and doping of the sub-surface region, which can be used for the improvement of the growth process and post-growth treatments for the development of diamond-based microelectronic devices.