A Study Of Different Metal Contact’s With Titanium Dioxide (TiO2)

Rishabh Soni, Saurabh Trivedi, Devrishi Malik, Osho Gera

Subject: VLSI Fabrication Practicum
SCEE, Indian Institute Of Technology, Mandi

Objective- Different type of materials i.e Au, Pt, and

Pd has been experimented as metal contact on Titanium
dioxide (TiO2) thin film. These metal contacts have been
deposited using sputtering machine and spin coating
method has been chosen to deposit TiO2 thin film. The
ohmic contact characteristic of the three materials can
be studied using Current-Voltage measurement of the
proposed contacts.
I. LITERATURE REVIEW
Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) has emerged as a much studied
semiconductor material due to the properties of the Tio2 that
it can work as both n and p-type semiconductor according
to its film thickness[1-2]. With its wide energy band gap
and transparence property, nanostructured TiO2 has found
numerous applications in thin film electronic devices. One
important property in fabrication of thin film electronic devices
is the ohmic contact characteristic between the thin film and
metal contact. This is because a metal contact provides an
outside communication to a device.
An ohmic contact is defined as having: a linear and Fig. 1. Spin Coater
symmetric current-voltage relationship for positive and
negative voltages, and negligible resistance compared with
the bulk of the device. A factor controlling this ohmic contact
characteristic is Schottky Barrier Height. A low Schottky is achieved. For the required rotation it has motor inside and
Barrier Height is needed to create a good ohmic contact with this machine we have also a indicator and controller part
whereas a high Schottky Barrier Height will cause a Schottky which indicates the speed of the rotation in rpm, and we can
or rectifying contact. The barrier height, (B) is equal to switch on and off the coater using this controller.
the work function of the metal (M) minus the electron
affinity of the semiconductor (S) as shown in equation.

B. Sputtering Machine:
B=M-S
Hence, choices of materials for metal contact would deter- Sputtering is a broadly used and highly versatile vacuum
mine the barrier height of the contact. In this study three types coating system used for the deposition of a variety of materials.
of materials which are Aurum, Platinum, and Palladium will Sputtering deposition systems use high energy particle as a
be used as metal contact on a TiO2 thin film and the best way of transferring kinetic energy to a target in order to
metal contact material is determined. remove material for deposition.
II. EQUIPMENT’ S AND MATERIAL’ S USED
Firstly we will take the silicon wafer(n or p type) it is
available in our lab to deposite the TiO2 on the surface of
C. 4-Probe Machine and Keithley:
the wafer. Below we have describe the equipment to be used
for this proposal.
4-Probe machine is used to analyse the electrical charac-
A. Spin Coater: teristics like i-v char, c-v characteristics etc. By using the
A machine used for spin coating is called a spin coater. software named as KEITHLEY we can see the whichever
Rotation is continued until the desired thickness of the film charateristics we want to see.
 rotating bar then after closing the cap of the coater will apply
the TiO2 solution in the wafer then we will start the machine
and the solution now spread all over the wafer and make a
thin layer of the TiO2 and we will repeat the same process n
times according to the thickness required for our experment.

B. Sputtering Process:
Basically the steps of sputtering process are as follows:
• The neutral gas or an inert gas like organ is ionized by
a external power supply, producing plasma.
• A source (the cathode, also called the target) is bom-
barded in high vacuum by gas ions due to the potential
drop acceleration in the cathode sheath.
• Atoms from the target are ejected by momentum transfer
and diffuse through the vacuum chamber.
• Atoms are deposited on the substrate to be coated and
form a thin film. Because sputter yields are of order unity
for almost all target materials, a very wide variety of pure
metals, alloys, and insulators can be deposited.
Fig. 2. 4-Probe Machine

III. THEORY
Whenever a metal and a semiconductor are in intimate
contact, there exists a potential barrier between the two that
prevents most charge carriers (electrons or holes) from passing
from one to the other. Only a small number of carriers have
enough energy to get over the barrier and cross to the other
material. When a bias is applied to the junction, it can have
one of two effects: it can make the barrier appear lower from
the semiconductor side, or it can make it appear higher. The
bias does not change the barrier height from the metal side.
The result of this is either a Schottky Barrier (rectifying
contact), where the junction conducts for one bias polarity,
but not the other or a ohmic contact. Almost all metal-
semiconductor junctions will exhibit some of this rectifying
behavior.Schottky Contacts make good diodes, and can even
be used to make a kind of transistor, but for getting signals
into and out of a semiconductor device, we generally want a
contact that is Ohmic. Ohmic contacts conduct the same for
both polarities (They obey Ohm’s Law). Fig. 3. sputtering process schematic

IV. FABRICATION STEP’ S DESCRIPTION Sputter deposition is a physical vapor deposition method of
Step’s to implement the proposed experiment are as follows: thin film deposition. This involves ejecting material from a
• 1. Preparation of substrate (Cleaning).
”target” that is a source onto a ”substrate” such as a silicon
• 2. Deposition of TiO2 solution using spin coating ma-
wafer. Sputtering can be of two type 1st is DC sputtering
chine show in fig(1). which is shown in fig[3] and 2nd one is RF sputtering in which
• 3. Deposition of Metal Contacts (Au, Pt, Pd).
we will use RF power to create a plasma which required more
• 4. I-V Characterisation of the Fabricated contacts.
power in comparison to the DC sputtering.

A. Spin Coating Process: V. CONCLUSION

For the implementation of the proposed contact’s, firstly Three types of metal contact materials i.e. Au(Gold),
we have to make a thin layer of the TiO2 solution above Pt(platinum) and Pd have deposited onto TiO2 thin film and
the substrate usign the Spin Coater machine. In spin coater the ohmic characteristics have been studied in this project
machine firstly we kept the wafer above the vacuum equipped proposal. Au(Gold) metal contact has shown lowest resistivity
with the TiO2 thin film thus making it the best candidate for
metal contact materials for the samples in this project[6].
As we can see in the fig(4), lowest resistivity shown by Au
the pd and highest resistivity is shown by Pt. So by this we
can conclude that Pt is not effective metal contact.

Fig. 4. I-V characteristics Of Ohmic Contacts

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