An Investigation of SiC Schottky Contact Barrier Inhomogeneity for Temperature Sensing Applications

This paper proposes a method of characterizing silicon carbide Schottky diodes with inhomogeneous contacts in temperature sensing applications. Using the energy activation technique, temperature intervals where the effective barrier height is constant are determined. Unlike the conventional barrier which increases with temperature for inhomogeneous diodes, the effective barrier has physical meaning and can be used for sensor performance evaluation. The utility of effective barrier analysis is confirmed on fabricated Ni/4H-SiC Schottky diodes with different annealing conditions and different degrees of barrier non-uniformity. The good agreement between calculated and experimental data proves the suitable behavior of inhomogeneous diodes as sensors for different temperature ranges.