In solid-state physics, a metal–semiconductor (M–S) junction is a type of electrical junction in which a metal comes in close contact with a semiconductor material. It is the oldest practical semiconductor device. M–S junctions can either be rectifying or non-rectifying. The rectifying metal–semiconductor junction forms a Schottky barrier, making a device known as a Schottky diode, while the non-rectifying junction is called an ohmic contact. (In contrast, a rectifying semiconductor–semiconductor junction, the most common semiconductor device today, is known as a p–n junction.)
Metal–semiconductor junctions are crucial to the operation of all semiconductor devices. Usually an ohmic contact is desired, so that electrical charge can be conducted easily between the active region of a transistor and the external circuitry.
Occasionally however a Schottky barrier is useful, as in Schottky diodes, Schottky transistors, and metal–semiconductor field effect transistors.
Whether a given metal-semiconductor junction is an ohmic contact or a Schottky barrier depends on the Schottky barrier height, ΦB, of the junction.
For a sufficiently large Schottky barrier height, that is, ΦB is significantly higher than the thermal energy kT, the semiconductor is depleted near the metal and behaves as a Schottky barrier. For lower Schottky barrier heights, the semiconductor is not depleted and instead forms an ohmic contact to the metal.
The Schottky barrier height is defined differently for n-type and p-type semiconductors (being measured from the conduction band edge and valence band edge, respectively). The alignment of the semiconductor's bands near the junction is typically independent of the semiconductor's doping level, so the n-type and p-type Schottky barrier heights are ideally related to each other by:
where Eg is the semiconductor's band gap.
In practice, the Schottky barrier height is not precisely constant across the interface, and varies over the interfacial surface.
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An ohmic contact is a non-rectifying electrical junction: a junction between two conductors that has a linear current–voltage (I–V) curve as with Ohm's law. Low-resistance ohmic contacts are used to allow charge to flow easily in both directions between the two conductors, without blocking due to rectification or excess power dissipation due to voltage thresholds. By contrast, a junction or contact that does not demonstrate a linear I–V curve is called non-ohmic.
Anderson's rule is used for the construction of energy band diagrams of the heterojunction between two semiconductor materials. Anderson's rule states that when constructing an energy band diagram, the vacuum levels of the two semiconductors on either side of the heterojunction should be aligned (at the same energy). It is also referred to as the electron affinity rule, and is closely related to the Schottky–Mott rule for metal–semiconductor junctions. Anderson's rule was first described by R. L. Anderson in 1960.
In solid-state physics, the work function (sometimes spelt workfunction) is the minimum thermodynamic work (i.e., energy) needed to remove an electron from a solid to a point in the vacuum immediately outside the solid surface. Here "immediately" means that the final electron position is far from the surface on the atomic scale, but still too close to the solid to be influenced by ambient electric fields in the vacuum. The work function is not a characteristic of a bulk material, but rather a property of the surface of the material (depending on crystal face and contamination).
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