On the study of metal—Semiconductor contacts

An iterative error-minimizing multiparameter computer technique is used to establish values for a six-parameter model of a metal-GaAs barrier based on measurements of temperature, current and the voltage split resulting from rectification at the contact. The most important feature of the technique is that it is not necessary to make assumptions regarding contact area, effective electron mass, and barrier heights. Rather, these parameters emerge from the computation as best-fitting computed values. The agreement between the computed contact area and the known physical electrode area is taken as an indicator of the validity of the procedure and of the consistency of the experimental data. Thermionic-field emission theory is proved quantitatively correct using this technique. Also, this technique constitutes a new method of establishing the value of the effective electron mass. For GaAs m* = 0.0677.