Recent progress on diamond Schottky diode

Diamond high power devices have been intensively investigated for several years because of the outstanding electrical and thermal properties of this wide band gap semiconductor. Schottky diode based on metal/diamond junction is very promising because of the high reported breakdown voltage (10 kV) and of recent progress to minimize the serial resistance. We report a pseudo-vertical architecture based on an oxygen-terminated diamond surface covered by an easily oxidizable metal, the zirconium (Zr). High forward current density of 103 A/cm2 at 6V, with a breakdown field larger than 7.7 MV/cm are demonstrated. The power figure of merit is above 244 MW/cm2. It is today the largest value reported for diamond Schottky diodes. Our results show also a high rectification ratio, higher than 9 orders of magnitude with a low reverse current (10-13 A) with an extremely good reproducibility.