High breakdown electric field diamond Schottky barrier diode with HfO2 field plate

Abstract

In this work, we fabricated a vertical diamond Schottky barrier diode (SBD) with a high breakdown electric field of 4.8 MV/cm and a forward current density of 2361 A/cm2. Compared with a regular diamond SBD, the breakdown electric field of SBD with a HfO2 field plate (FP) increased from 183 to 302 V, the current swing (ION/IOFF) was on the order of 1011. As the thickness of the HfO2 FP increased from 200 to 400 nm, the breakdown voltage of the SBD increased from 280 to 314 V, and the corresponding breakdown electric field increased from 4.5 to 5 MV/cm. We also measured the current–voltage characteristics at different temperatures to investigate the cause of the high on-resistance. As the measured temperature increased from 25 to 150 °C, the on-resistance of the device decreased from 4.7 to 1.7 mΩ·cm2. By studying the interface between HfO2 and the diamond, we found that HfO2 can reduce the interface state density of the Schottky contact. The interface state density of Zr/HfO2/diamond was lower than 1.5 × 1013 eV−1·cm−2. This work provides a simple strategy for realizing high-performance diamond SBDs.