Thermionic Field Emission Transport at Nanowire Schottky Barrier Contacts

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe high carrier concentrations typically reported for nanowire devices indicate that when Schottky barrier transport is present, it occurs in the thermionic field emission regime with a substantial but not exclusive tunneling component. Analysis by thermionic field emission is difficult due to its multivariate nature. In recent work, we developed a mathematical stability approach that greatly simplified the evaluation of the multivariate thermionic field emission parameters. This is a general method with potentially wide applicability, requiring only the effective mass m* and relative dielectric constant εr for a given semiconductor as inputs. In the present work, we investigate the influence of the materials properties effective mass m* and relative dielectric constant εr on stability for a range of real and simulated semiconductor nanowires. A further investigation of temperature sensitivity and regime trends is presented.