Negative capacitance peculiarities in a-Si:H/c-Si rectifier structure

Abstract

Nontrivial negative capacitance (NC) effect, observed in a-Si:H/c-Si heterostructure devices, is discussed emphasizing the theoretical interpretation of experimental data. To explain NC effect, we have performed dark current voltage (I-V) and admittance measurements (C-V, G-V, C-f and G-f). The calculated values of series resistance (R-s) and barrier height (Phi(Bo)) have the values from 100 to 114.7 Omega and 0.94 to 0.83 eV, respectively. Also, below 50% helium dilution rate, diode ideality factor (n) becomes bigger than 2, because tunneling at junction interface plays a major role. The measured room temperature (294 K) dark I-V result has been used during the fitting process for suggested capacitance model (Eq. (18)). The measured NC values exhibit strongly voltage depended behavior. This unexpected behavior is attributed to the presence of inductively coupled space charge region which might possibly be stemmed from the helium diluted a-Si:H material. It is seen that the measured NC values are well fitted with suggested capacitance model (Eq. (18)). Application of suggested correction formula on to experimental C-V data yields satisfactory results. It is shown that the calculated inductance values of the investigated device range from 10 to 42 mu H and after correction, NC values are no longer observed in the C-d-V data. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.