Electrostatic analysis of n-doped SrTiO3 metal-insulator-semiconductor systems

Electron doped SrTiO3, a complex-oxide semiconductor, possesses novel electronic properties due to its strong temperature and electric-field dependent permittivity. Due to the high permittivity, metal/n-SrTiO3 systems show reasonably strong rectification even when SrTiO3 is degenerately doped. Our experiments show that the insertion of a sub nanometer layer of AlOx in between the metal and n-SrTiO3 interface leads to a dramatic reduction of the Schottky barrier height (from around 0.90 V to 0.25 V). This reduces the interface resistivity by 4 orders of magnitude. The derived electrostatic analysis of the metal-insulator-semiconductor (n-SrTiO3) system is consistent with this trend. When compared with a Si based MIS system, the change is much larger and mainly governed by the high permittivity of SrTiO3. The non-linear permittivity of n-SrTiO3 leads to unconventional properties such as a temperature dependent surface potential non-existent for semiconductors with linear permittivity such as Si. This allows tuning of the interfacial band alignment, and consequently the Schottky barrier height, in a much more drastic way than in conventional semiconductors.