An investigation of metal/GaAs(100) interfaces by deep level transient spectroscopy

In this work we investigate the ability of DLTS to detect the presence of interface states at metal/GaAs(100) (n-type) interfaces where the semiconductor surface has been prepared by two different procedures. A correlation is observed between the magnitude of the ideality parameter determined from the current-voltage (I-V) characteristic of the diode and presence in the DLTS spectrum of a feature attributable to interface states. Schottky diodes have been fabricated with both gold and iron contacts which exhibit near ideal behaviour (n<1.1). No interface states were detected by DLTS on either of these diodes. However, diodes fabricated on oxidised GaAs surfaces, with higher idealities (1.5 <n < 2), exhibit additional electron trap levels in the DLTS spectrum. For the case of iron, a deep level of activation energy 0.55 eV is observed in the conventional reverse bias pulse sequence mode of DLTS operation. In addition, for both gold and iron diodes, a spectral feature which can be attributed to a broad distribution of interface states within the deplation region is observed during a forward bias pulse sequence.