We report on the effect of annealing temperature on electrical, interfacial reactions and surface morphological properties of Ni/Cu Schottky contacts on n-type InP. The extracted barrier height of as-deposited Ni/Cu Schottky contact is 0.59 eV (I-V) respectively. The high-quality Schottky contact with barrier height and ideality factor of 0.65 eV (I-V) and 1.15 respectively, can be obtained after annealing at 300℃ for 1 min in a nitrogen atmosphere. However, annealing at 400℃, results the decrease in the barrier height to 0.54 eV (I-V). From the above observations, it is observed that Ni/Cu Schottky contact exhibited excellent electrical properties after annealing at 300℃. Hence, the optimum annealing temperature for the Ni/Cu Schottky contact is 300℃. Furthermore, Cheung’s functions is used to extract the diode parameters including ideality factor, barrier height and series resistance. According to the XRD analysis, the formation of the indium phases at the Ni/Cu/n-InP interface could be the reason for the increase in the barrier height at annealing temperature 300℃. Further, the degradation of the barrier heights after annealing at 400℃ may be due to the formation of phosphide phases at the Ni/Cu/n-InP interface. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) results show that the overall surface morphology of the Ni/Cu Schottky contact is reasonably smooth.
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