Determination of capture barrier energy of the E-center in palladium Schottky barrier diodes of antimony-doped germanium by varying the pulse width

Abstract The capture barrier energy of the E-center deep level defect introduced in Pd/Sb-doped Ge by alpha-particle irradiation has been studied. Palladium Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) fabricated by resistive evaporation technique were successfully characterised by current-voltage (I-V), capacitance-voltage (C-V), conventional and Laplace deep level transient spectroscopy. The rectification quality of Schottky contacts before and after irradiation was confirmed by I-V and C-V results. The ideality factor and doping density were determined to be in the range of 1.23 to 1.46 and 3.55 × 1015 to 5.25 × 1015 cm−3, respectively before and after irradiating the device with alpha-particles. The thermal emission activation energy and the apparent capture cross section of the E-center were determined from the Arrhenius plot to be 0.37 eV and 1.3 × 10−15 cm2, respectively. The capture barrier energyand the true capture cross section of the E-center were calculated to be 0.052 eV and 2.25 × 10−17 cm2, respectively from the experimental findings after varying the pulse width at different temperature range from 145 to 180 K in steps of 5 K.