ZnO has emerged as a promising candidate for optoelectronic and microelectronic applications, whose development requires greater understanding and control of their electronic contacts. The rapid pace of ZnO research over the past decade has yielded considerable new information on the nature of ZnO interfaces with metals. Work on ZnO contacts over the past decade has now been carried out on high quality material, nearly free from complicating factors such as impurities, morphological and native point defects. Based on the high quality bulk and thin film crystals now available, ZnO exhibits a range of systematic interface electronic structure that can be understood at the atomic scale. Here we provide a comprehensive review of Schottky barrier and ohmic contacts including work extending over the past half century. For Schottky barriers, these results span the nature of ZnO surface charge transfer, the roles of surface cleaning, crystal quality, chemical interactions, and defect formation. For ohmic contacts, these studies encompass the nature of metal-specific interactions, the role of annealing, multilayered contacts, alloyed contacts, metallization schemes for state-of-the-art contacts, and their application to n-type versus p-type ZnO. Both ZnO Schottky barriers and ohmic contacts show a wide range of phenomena and electronic behavior, which can all be directly tied to chemical and structural changes on an atomic scale.
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15 June 2011
Review Article|
June 23 2011
ZnO Schottky barriers and Ohmic contacts
Leonard J. Brillson;
Leonard J. Brillson
a)
1Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Physics, and Center for Materials Research,
Ohio State University
, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA
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Yicheng Lu
Yicheng Lu
2 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Rutgers University
, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA
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a)
Electronic mail: [email protected].
J. Appl. Phys. 109, 121301 (2011)
Article history
Received:
November 30 2010
Accepted:
February 10 2011
Citation
Leonard J. Brillson, Yicheng Lu; ZnO Schottky barriers and Ohmic contacts. J. Appl. Phys. 15 June 2011; 109 (12): 121301. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3581173
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