On the electrical parameters, conduction mechanisms depend on temperature and voltage, and thermal sensor applications in the Re/n‑GaAs/Au Schottky diodes

Abstract To get more accurate/reliable results on the basic electronic-parameters and current transport/conduction mechanism (CCMs), the current–voltage ( I – V ) measurements were measured in a wide temperature and voltage regions in the Schottky diodes (SDs). Therefore, these measurements of Re/ n -GaAs/Au SDs were performed over wide temperature (100–380 K) and voltage (− 1.0 V/1.4 V) ranges. Experimental-findings indicate that while the barrier height, BH at V = 0 (Φ B0 ) inclines with inclining temperature almost as exponentially, ideality factor ( n ) and series resistance ( R s ) declines. These parameters were also obtained from the Cheung -functions a second way and observed an important discrepancy between them have been explained by the nature of calculated-model, voltage dependence of them, and barrier-inhomogeneities. CCMs were also investigated in detail, and it shows that field emission (FE) is more dominant than thermionic/emission (TE) and thermionic field/emission (TFE). For various constant current values, temperature coefficient of voltage was found higher than − 1 mV/K, so these samples may be used in thermal—sensor applications. To determine the change of BH with voltage, the BH— q /2 kT graph was plotted in voltage range of 0.0–0.6 V and these two linear-components which are corresponding to low & high temperatures and the value of BH decreases with rising temperature. In the calculation of BH the effect of voltage must be considered as well as temperature.