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Growth of Cr2O3 on n-Silicon Substrate using AACVD and its Application as a Hole Selective Layer

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Abstract

With the advancement of technology, inexpensive and highly scalable deposition techniques are extremely desirable for low-cost device fabrication. Aerosol-assisted chemical vapor deposition (AACVD) is a less complex and scalable deposition technique that works at atmospheric pressure. In this article, we demonstrate the growth of chromium oxide (Cr2O3) films onto n-type silicon substrates utilizing the AACVD method, leading to the first-ever p-Cr2O3/n-silicon heterojunction device by this method. In this paper, we have analyzed the effect of temperature and concentration of precursor solution on the morphology of the deposited films. The structural analysis of the Cr2O3 films shows a closely packed uniform structure with the root mean square (RMS) value of surface roughness varying from 1.6 nm to 5.99 nm. The maximum growth rate of 45.20 nm/min on silicon substrate was observed at 500 °C with 0.05 M precursor solution. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) showed a mixed phase layer, with the ratio of Cr3+ to Cr6+ for the film deposited at 450 °C, with 0.05 M precursor solution being 1.51 and increasing with the deposition temperature. The current–voltage characteristics showed a diode-like behavior with a high cut-in voltage of about 2 V. A high cut-in voltage exists due to a significant band offset at both the conduction band and valence band exists between Cr2O3 and silicon. The utilization of the AACVD technique to grow Cr2O3 on silicon substrate using chromium acetylacetonate as a precursor combined with the illustration of diode characteristics provide the novelty of this work.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Centre for Design & Fabrication of Electronic Devices (C4DFED) and Advanced Materials Research Centre (AMRS) of IIT Mandi.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing and Electrical Engineering, IIT Mandi, Kamand, H.P-175005, India

    Md Sadullah, Syed Mohd Hussain & Kunal Ghosh

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  1. Md Sadullah
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  2. Syed Mohd Hussain
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  3. Kunal Ghosh
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Contributions

Md. Sadullah: Contributed towards performing the experiments and analysis of the results obtained through scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. He also contributed to the fabrication, numerical simulation, and analysis of the diodes.

Syed Md. Hussain: Contributed to the analysis of the XPS results.

Kunal Ghosh: Contributed to the design and supervision of the study.

The first draft of the manuscript was prepared by Md. Sadullah. All the authors contributed to the necessary revisions and preparing the final draft.

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Correspondence to Md Sadullah.

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Sadullah, M., Hussain, S.M. & Ghosh, K. Growth of Cr2O3 on n-Silicon Substrate using AACVD and its Application as a Hole Selective Layer. Silicon 16, 1893–1903 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-023-02791-y

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