Planar Ballistic Electron Emission Spectroscopy for Single-Shot Probing of Energy Barrier Inhomogeneity at Junction Interface

Abstract

We propose an experimental methodology for probing the energy barrier inhomogeneity at the metal/semiconductor interface without the need for time-consuming microscopic survey. It is based on the known statistical nature of the interfacial energy barrier and the use of planar tunnel junction as an array of parallelly-connected ballistic electron emission microscopy (BEEM) tips. In order to analyze a lump of local BEEM signals, we incorporate the Tung model into the Bell-Kaiser theory. To validate our theoretical strategies, we investigate the interfacial energy barrier inhomogeneity of Pt/4H-SiC(0001) junction as a model system.