Understanding the electron transport through NiSi2-Si interfaces

Metal-semiconductor interfaces are of huge importance for applications and can be found in various field-effect transistors. We study the interface between NiSi2 and silicon on the basis of density functional theory and the NEGF formalism. Different crystal orientations and strain states are investigated systematically.

We focus on the tunneling phenomena of carriers through the Schottky contact at the interface, which are crucial for the on-current in transistors. The on-current is found to be strongly dependent on strain and orientation. It will be shown that the height of the Schottky barrier determines the tunneling current. However, not all changes in the current can be traced back to the barrier height. The modification of the electronic structure matter as well, which can be modeled based on the effective mass of the tunneling carriers. We have also extracted work functions of the isolated materials which we relate to the extracted Schottky barrier heights. It will be shown that the Schottky-Mott model fails for this material system. Better approaches will be discussed in our contribution.