Schottky Diode Leakage Current Fluctuations: Electrostatically Induced Flexoelectricity in Silicon
Citation
Source Title
ISSN
Faculty
School
Funding and Sponsorship
Collection
Abstract
Nearly four decades have passed since IBM scientists pioneered atomic force microscopy (AFM) by merging the principles of a scanning tunneling microscope with the features of a stylus profilometer. Today, electrical AFM modes are an indispensable asset within the semiconductor and nanotechnology industries, enabling the characterization and manipulation of electrical properties at the nanoscale. However, electrical AFM measurements suffer from reproducibility issues caused, for example, by surface contaminations, Joule heating, and hard-to-minimize tip drift and tilt. Using as experimental system nanoscale Schottky diodes assembled on oxide-free silicon crystals of precisely defined surface chemistry, it is revealed that voltage-dependent adhesion forces lead to significant rotation of the AFM platinum tip. The electrostatics-driven tip rotation causes a strain gradient on the silicon surface, which induces a flexoelectric reverse bias term. This directional flexoelectric internal-bias term adds to the external (instrumental) bias, causing both an increased diode leakage as well as a shift of the diode knee voltage to larger forward biases. These findings will aid the design and characterization of silicon-based devices, especially those that are deliberately operated under large strain or shear, such as in emerging energy harvesting technologies including Schottky-based triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs).
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Lyu, Xin; MacGregor, M.; Liu, J.; Darwish, Nadim ; Ciampi, Simone (2023)Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) are an emerging energy harvesting technology able to convert ubiquitous mechanical energy into electricity. Friction, static charging and flexoelectricity are all involved in the ...
-
Hurtado, Carlos; Lyu, Xin ; Ferrie, Stuart; Le Brun, A.P.; Macgregor, M.; Ciampi, Simone (2022)Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) based on sliding silicon-organic monolayer-metal Schottky diodes are an emerging autonomous direct-current (DC) current supply technology. Herein, using conductive atomic force microscopy ...
-
Lyu, Xin ; Ferrie, Stuart; Pivrikas, A.; MacGregor, M.; Ciampi, Simone (2022)Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) are an autonomous and sustainable power-generation technology, seeking to harvest small vibrations into electricity. Here, by achieving molecular control of oxide-free Si crystals and ...