Current-voltage electrical characteristics of Er silicide/Si（001） nanocontacts are measured in situ in a scanning tunneling microscopy system. Introduced as a new technique to suppress surface leakage conduction on...Current-voltage electrical characteristics of Er silicide/Si（001） nanocontacts are measured in situ in a scanning tunneling microscopy system. Introduced as a new technique to suppress surface leakage conduction on Si（001）,a silver wetting layer is evaporated onto the substrate surface kept at room temperature with Er Si2 nanoislands already existing. The effects of the silver layer on the current-voltage characteristics of nanocontacts are discussed.Our experimental results reveal that the silver layer at coverage of 0.4–0.7 monolayer can suppress effectively the current contribution from the surface conduction path. After the surface leakage path of nanocontacts is obstructed, the ideality factor and the Schottky barrier height are determined using the thermionic emission theory, about 2 and 0.5 eV, respectively. The approach adopted here could shed light on the intrinsic transport properties of metal-semiconductor nanocontacts.展开更多
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No 11374058
文摘Current-voltage electrical characteristics of Er silicide/Si（001） nanocontacts are measured in situ in a scanning tunneling microscopy system. Introduced as a new technique to suppress surface leakage conduction on Si（001）,a silver wetting layer is evaporated onto the substrate surface kept at room temperature with Er Si2 nanoislands already existing. The effects of the silver layer on the current-voltage characteristics of nanocontacts are discussed.Our experimental results reveal that the silver layer at coverage of 0.4–0.7 monolayer can suppress effectively the current contribution from the surface conduction path. After the surface leakage path of nanocontacts is obstructed, the ideality factor and the Schottky barrier height are determined using the thermionic emission theory, about 2 and 0.5 eV, respectively. The approach adopted here could shed light on the intrinsic transport properties of metal-semiconductor nanocontacts.
