Experimental and theoretical investigations on temperature and voltage dependence of an Au/AZO thin‑flm Schottky diode

In this work, aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) thin flms were deposited by DC sputtering on a glass substrate at a typical sputtering power. It was observed that the AZO structure changes on the ZnO crystalline structure. The measurement of the transparency spectrum on the AZO flms shows an optical bandgap about 4.3 eV, which the Al doping into ZnO structure pronounced width localized states by Urbach energy that was 0.42 eV. Moreover, the experimental results on the electrical properties of AZO/Au thin flm were evaluated at diferent temperatures by four-point probe. Also, a simulation analysis on the electrical parameters of the Schottky Au/AZO junction has been done. Our calculation is based on the thermionic emission theory, in which by ftting the numerical results with the experimental current–voltage measurements, the barrier height, ideality factor and saturation current have been obtained. Our result confrmed excellent rectifying characteristics. The extracted result may be useful in designing nanoelectronic devices.