Mitigating the degradation of metal–semiconductor contacts with optimized electron beam evaporation

An optimized electron beam evaporation (EBE) setup is presented that allows the suppression of charged particle bombardment of 4” semiconductor samples during metal coating. In-situ measurements of charge carrier flux for different tool configurations are carried out. A comparison of platinum-silicon Schottky diodes fabricated without and with the optimized EBE setup shows that a reduction of Fermi level pinning and thus higher Schottky barriers to n-type silicon is obtained.