Electrical and structural properties of the swift heavy ion irradiated Au/n-GaAs Schottky barrier diodes

Au/n-GaAs Schottky Barrier Diodes (SBDs) have been fabricated on LEC grown silicon doped (100) GaAs single crystals. The SBDs were irradiated using hi gh energy (120 MeV) silicon ion with fluences of 1x10(11) and 1x10(12)ions/ cm(2). Current-Voltage (I-V) characteristics of unirradiated and irradiated diodes were analyzed. The change in the reverse leakage current increases with increasing ion fluence. This is due to the irradiation induced defects at the interface and its increase with the fluence. The diodes were anneal ed at 573 and 673 K to study the effect of annealing. The rectifying behavi or of the irradiated (fluence of 1 x 10(12) ions/cm(2)) SBDs improves upon as the annealing temperature increases and is attributed to the in situ sel f-annealing during irradiation. Scanning Electron Microscopic analysis was carried out on the irradiated samples to delineate the projected range and to observe defects.