Simulated electron affinity tuning in metal-insulator-metal (MIM) diodes
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Date
2017-04-27
Authors
Mistry, Kissan
Yavuz, Mustafa
Musselman, Kevin P.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
American Institute of Physics
Abstract
Metal-insulator-metal diodes for rectification applications must exhibit high asymmetry, nonlinearity, and responsivity. Traditional methods of improving these figures of merit have consisted of increasing insulator thickness, adding multiple insulator layers, and utilizing a variety of metal contact combinations. However, these methods have come with the price of increasing the diode resistance and ultimately limiting the operating frequency to well below the terahertz regime. In this work, an Airy Function Transfer Matrix simulation method was used to observe the effect of tuning the electron affinity of the insulator as a technique to decrease the diode resistance. It was shown that a small increase in electron affinity can result in a resistance decrease in upwards of five orders of magnitude, corresponding to an increase in operating frequency on the same order. Electron affinity tuning has a minimal effect on the diode figures of merit, where asymmetry improves or remains unaffected and slight decreases in nonlinearity and responsivity are likely to be greatly outweighed by the improved operating frequency of the diode.
Description
This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. The following article appeared in J. Appl. Phys. and may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4983256.
Keywords
Metal insulator metal diode, Insulators, Tunneling, Electron affinity, Work function, Schottky barrier, Poole frenkel