Demonstration of an amorphous carbon tunnel diode

Abstract

Negative differential conductance in metal/amorphous nitrogenated carbon (a-CNx)/Si structures is demonstrated at room temperature. These metal-insulator-semiconductor tunnel diodes are fabricated by optimizing the tunnel barrier at the a-CNx/Si junction through the control of the band gap and nitrogen doping level in carbon where this a-C layer acts as a semi-insulator. A small electron tunneling effective mass of about 0.06 times the free electron mass, a coherence length of similar to 10 nm in these thin a-CNx layers and a low interface trap density suggest fast device operation similar to classical tunnel diodes. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.

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