Schottky Diode

Basically when a metal made a contact with the semiconductor, it will make two types of
contacts. They are Ohmic and Schottky contact. The type of contact defined mainly based on the
Work Function of a metal.

Work Function of a metal: The work function of a metal is defined as the amount of energy
required to move an electron from Fermi level to vacuum level.

Electron Affinity: The amount of energy required to move an electron from conduction band to
the vacuum level.

Metal n Semiconductor

Fig1. Band Diagram of metal and semiconductor without contact

When we made a metal in contact with the semiconductor, then the Fermi level of both metal and
semiconductor must aligned and the interface the band diagram will be as shown in Fig2.

Fig2. Band Diagram of metal semiconductor contact

 Here the Barrier height is given by

B = M

Depending on the B value we can decide whether the contact between the metal and
semiconductor is Ohmic or Schottky. In this case if we apply the voltage greater than B
(forward bias) then the barrier height is reduced by the amount of applied voltage (qV) which
will cause the flow of current as shown in Fig3(b). If we apply a negative potential to the
Schottky contact (Reverse bias) then the barrier height increases by an amount of qV which will
oppose the flow of current.

It is similar to the P-N junction diode but the only difference is there is no accumulation of
charge at the junction. So no capacitance exists in Schottky diode. The V- I characteristics of the
Schottky diode are as shown in Fig3 (d).Schottky diodes are often biased with a small DC
Forward current , but can be used without bias. Due to because of this only we are using this at
THz Regime.

Fig3: Schottky Diode biasing conditions

 The primary application of Schottky diodes is in frequency conversion of an input signal.
The three basic frequency conversion operations are rectification (Conversion to DC), detection
(Demodulation of an AM signal), and mixing (Frequency shifting).

The I-V characteristics of the Schottky diode is similar to the normal pn junction diode
and the relation is approximated by the equation

I (V) = Is (eV - 1)

I (V) = I0 + I = I0 + vGd + d + .

Fig 4: Schottky diode as a rectifier

If we apply the time varying signal to the terminals of Schottky diode, we may get the
DC term along with the harmonics. If we use the Low Pass Filter after the Schottky diode we can
achieve the DC term only. In this case the Schottky diode is used as a rectifier.

Fig 4: Schottky diode as a Detector

 If we apply AM signal as an input to the Schottky diode then the output signal consists of
DC component, Signal frequency and its harmonics. For obtaining the signal from the output we
have to pass this through the Band pass Filter.

Fabrication Process:

The steps for fabricating the Schottky diode is as follows

We have to select the substrate

Oxidize the substrate
Design the photo resist
Align the photo resist using DSA
Expose the substrate with photo resist to uv-light
Etch out the substrate
Deposit the metal
Make the metal contacts.