Defect Reduction in Si-based Metal-Semiconductor-Metal Photodetectors with Cryogenic Processed Schottky Contacts

Metal-Semiconductor-Metal photodetectors (MSM-PD's) and simple Schottky diodes were fabricated using a low temperature (LT) technique to greatly reduce the device dark current. LT processing for metal deposition increased Schottky barrier height by improving the interface between metal and semiconductor to reduce the leakage current of the device. The structure consists of a 20 Å oxide over the active area to passivate surface states, a thicker oxide under contact pads to reduce dark current and the interdigitated Schottky contacts. A comparison was made for Schottky metal deposited with the substrate at 25 °C or -50 °C (LT). The devices fabricated using the LT process had better I-V characteristics compared to detectors fabricated using the standard room temperature (RT) metal deposition technique. The dark current for the LT film was found to be one to three orders lower in magnitude compared to the film deposited at RT. In one case, for example, the dark current was significantly reduced from 1.69 nA to 4.58 pA at 1.0 V. The active area for the device was determined to be 36 × 50 μm2 with 4 μm electrode width and 4 μm electrode spacing. Additionally, LT-MSM-PD's exhibited an excellent linear relationship between the photo-current and the incident light power. The Schottky barrier height for LT processing was found to be 0.79 eV; however, this value was 0.1 eV more than that of the same contact obtained by RT processing.