Temperature dependence of current–voltage characteristics of Ag/p-SnS Schottky barrier diodes

The current–voltage (I–V) measurements on Ag/p-SnS Schottky barrier diodes in the temperature range 100–300 K were carried out. It has been found that all contacts are of Schottky type. The ideality factor and the apparent barrier height calculated by using thermionic emission (TE) theory were found to be strongly temperature dependent. The I–V curves is fitted by the equation based on thermionic emission theory, but the zero-bias barrier height (FB0) decreases and the ideality factor (n) increases with decreasing temperature. The conventional Richardson plot exhibits non-linearity below 200 K with the linear portion corresponding to activation energy of 0.32 eV. It is shown that the values of Rs estimated from Cheung’s method were strongly temperature dependent and decreased with increasing temperature. From the reverse-bias I–V graphs, it is found that the experimental carrier density (NA) values increased with increasing temperature.