Understanding of the Schottky barriers formed at metal contact-InAs nanowire interfaces is of great importance for the development of high-performance InAs nanowire nanoelectronic and quantum devices. Here, we report a systematical study of InAs nanowire field-effect transistors (FETs) and the Schottky barrier heights formed at the contact-nanowire interfaces. The InAs nanowires employed are grown by molecular beam epitaxy and are high material quality single crystals, and the devices are made by directly contacting the nanowires with a series of metals of different work functions. The fabricated InAs nanowire FET devices are characterized by electrical measurements at different temperatures and the Schottky barrier heights are extracted from the measured temperature and gate-voltage dependences of the channel current. We show that although the work functions of the contact metals are widely spread, the Schottky barrier heights are determined to be distributed over 35–55 meV, showing a weak but not negligible dependence on the metals. The deduced Fermi level in the InAs nanowire channels is found to be in the band gap and very close to the conduction band. The physical origin of the results is discussed in terms of Fermi level pinning by the surface states of the InAs nanowires and a shift in pinned Fermi level induced by the metal-related interface states.
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7 February 2016
Research Article|
February 04 2016
Schottky barrier heights at the interfaces between pure-phase InAs nanowires and metal contacts
Boyong Feng;
Boyong Feng
1Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices and Department of Electronics,
Peking University
, Beijing 100871, China
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Shaoyun Huang;
Shaoyun Huang
a)
1Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices and Department of Electronics,
Peking University
, Beijing 100871, China
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Jiyin Wang;
Jiyin Wang
1Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices and Department of Electronics,
Peking University
, Beijing 100871, China
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Dong Pan;
Dong Pan
2State Key Laboratory for Superlattices and Microstructures, Institute of Semiconductors,
Chinese Academy of Sciences
, Beijing 100083, China
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Jianghua Zhao;
Jianghua Zhao
2State Key Laboratory for Superlattices and Microstructures, Institute of Semiconductors,
Chinese Academy of Sciences
, Beijing 100083, China
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a)
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic addresses: syhuang@pku.edu.cn and hqxu@pku.edu.cn
J. Appl. Phys. 119, 054304 (2016)
Article history
Received:
November 05 2015
Accepted:
January 25 2016
Citation
Boyong Feng, Shaoyun Huang, Jiyin Wang, Dong Pan, Jianghua Zhao, H. Q. Xu; Schottky barrier heights at the interfaces between pure-phase InAs nanowires and metal contacts. J. Appl. Phys. 7 February 2016; 119 (5): 054304. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4941391
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