Investigation of the interface state characteristics of the Al/Al2O3/Ge/p-Si heterostructure over a wide frequency range by capacitance and conductance measurements

In this work, Al/Al2O3/Ge/p-Si heterostructures were fabricated by e-beam thermal evaporation. The EDX (energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy) map visually obtained the basic distribution information in a two-dimensional graph. Three-dimensional atomic Force Microscope (AFM) analysis of the roughness of the Al/Al2O3/Ge/p-Si heterostructure shows that the Al2O3 particle has approximately 4.35 nm. Quantitative analysis via histogram plots for Al2O3 interlayer grown on p-Si shows a Gaussian-like distribution, and it has a sharp profile between 0 and 2 nm on silicon, located around 1.2 nm. The current-voltage (I–V) and capacitance-conductance-voltage (C-G/ω-V) measurements were used to investigate the electrical properties of the structure at room temperature. The I–V measurements revealed two distinct linear regions, attributed to barrier inhomogeneity and distribution of interfacial state/trap densities (Dit). For this reason, we obtained Dit distributions by considering the voltage dependence of the ideality factor n(V) in two regions. Diode parameters acquired through different methods are comparatively presented with a brief literature review. Then, the C-G/ω-V measurements were conducted across a broad frequency range (from 0.3 kHz to 3 MHz), and these measurements revealed notable alterations in the electrical parameters with regard to frequency. In order to probe interface states/traps, we employed the conductance/admittance method, which provided satisfactory information about trap lifetime, following the low-high frequency (LF-HF) and Hill-Coleman methods. The effects of these states/traps on the measurements according to voltage, frequency, and energy level (Eit-Ev) are discussed in detail.