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Concept
Contact resistance
Summary
The term contact resistance refers to the contribution to the total resistance of a system which can be attributed to the contacting interfaces of electrical leads and connections as opposed to the intrinsic resistance. This effect is described by the term electrical contact resistance (ECR) and arises as the result of the limited areas of true contact at an interface and the presence of resistive surface films or oxide layers. ECR may vary with time, most often decreasing, in a process known as resistance creep. The idea of potential drop on the injection electrode was introduced by William Shockley to explain the difference between the experimental results and the model of gradual channel approximation. In addition to the term ECR, interface resistance, transitional resistance, or just simply correction term are also used. The term parasitic resistance is used as a more general term, of which it is usually assumed that contact resistance is a major component.
Here we need to distinguish the contact resistance evaluation in two-electrode systems (e.g. diodes) and three-electrode systems (e.g. transistors).
For two electrode systems the specific contact resistivity is experimentally defined as the slope of the I-V curve at V = 0:
where J is the current density, or current per area. The units of specific contact resistivity are typically therefore in ohms-square meter, or . When the current is a linear function of the voltage, the device is said to have ohmic contacts.
The resistance of contacts can be crudely estimated by comparing the results of a four terminal measurement to a simple two-lead measurement made with an ohmmeter. In a two-lead experiment, the measurement current causes a potential drop across both the test leads and the contacts so that the resistance of these elements is inseparable from the resistance of the actual device, with which they are in series. In a four-point probe measurement, one pair of leads is used to inject the measurement current while a second pair of leads, in parallel with the first, is used to measure the potential drop across the device.
Official source
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