Electronic Properties of the Metal and Thin Film Oxide Insulator Junction
EMSL Project ID
18195
Abstract
Modern solid state devices are based on conjoining prefentially doped seimconductor materials. One species may be doped as an electron donor ("N"), while a complementary species in an electronic junction would doped to have a surplus of holes, and thus accept electrons ("P"). Intrinsically however, metal conduction bands offer a source of electrons. Native thin insulating oxide films contain, or can be deposited with, oxygen vacancy defects that are holes in the material. Junctions of metals and thin oxide insulating films may reproduce the electronic properties of semiconductor devices. The phenomena of "poor" or "partial" conduction has been known for over 125 years. For example, one of the first US patents for a microphone was based on the observation that properly biased "rusty" nails in contact would generate a current that reproduced an impressed sound wave. . The famous Marconi "coherer" used for transatlantic wireless communication was a metal/thin film oxide junction device that later was realized to be the first solid state rectifier. The object of this proposal is to synthesize, study, and attmept to charcaterize the interfacial electronic properties of metal/thin film oxide junctions such as Fe/Fe2O3, Mg/MgO, Ca/CaO, Ag/MgO, Mo/MgO, and C/Hg2O/Fe.
Project Details
Project type
Exploratory Research
Start Date
2006-03-01
End Date
2007-03-19
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator