Abstract: Small high-quality Au/P-Si Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) with an extremely low reverse leakage current using wet lithography were produced. Their effective barrier heights (BHs) and ideality factors from current--voltage (I--V) characteristics were measured by a conducting probe atomic force microscope (C-AFM). In spite of the identical preparation of the diodes there was a diode-to-diode variation in ideality factor and barrier height parameters. By extrapolating the plots the built in potential of the Au /p-Si contact was obtained as V_bi = 0.5425 V and the barrier height value Φ _{B(C - V)} was calculated to be Φ_{B(C - V)} = 0.7145 V for Au/p-Si. It is found that for the diodes with diameters smaller than 100 μ m, the diode barrier height and ideality factor dependency to their diameters and correlation between the diode barrier height and its ideality factor are nonlinear, where similar to the earlier reported different metal semiconductor diodes in the literature, these parameters for the here manufactured diodes with diameters more than 100 μ m are also linear. Based on the very obvious sub-nanometer C-AFM produced pictures the scientific evidence behind this controversy is also explained.

Key words: Schottky barrier diodes, conducting probe-atomic force microscope, barrier height and ideality factor