Temperature dependence of barrier height in GaAs planar doped barrier diodes

We have investigated the reason for the temperature dependence barrier height of Planar Doped Barriers Diode (PDBD). It has been found, that the electron spill-over effect plays an important role in the functioning of PDBDs, especially in the case of low barrier PDBDs. This effect is a sensitive function of the temperature, which changes the electric field distribution in the undoped layer and therefore the barrier height. However, in contrast to the barrier height of Schottky diodes, the barrier height of PDBD increases with increasing temperature. This fact improves the temperature stability of PDBD. In this paper the theory is outlined concisely and some results of analytical solution and computer simulation using SILVACO software are reported. The results show that the barrier height of a typically low barrier GaAs PDBD has a positive temperature coefficient up to 0.15 meV/K in the temperature range of 200-400 K.