Synthetic Metals 157 (2007) 540–545 The effect of a novel organic compound chiral macrocyclic tetraamide-I interfacial layer on the calculation of electrical characteristics of an Al/tetraamide-I/p-Si contact T. Kılıc ¸o˘ glu a,∗ , M.E. Aydın a , G. Topal b , M.A. Ebeo ˘ glu c , H. Say ˘ gılı b a Department of Physics, Faculty of Science & Art, University of Dicle, Diyarbakır 21280, Turkey b Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Education, University of Dicle, Diyarbakır 21280, Turkey c Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Dumlupınar, K¨ utahya, Turkey Received 2 April 2007; received in revised form 11 May 2007; accepted 1 June 2007 Available online 26 July 2007 Abstract The Al/tetraamide-I/p-Si Schottky barrier diode (SBD) has been prepared by adding a solution of a novel nonpolymeric organic compound chiral macrocylic tetraamide-I in chloroform on top of a p-Si substrate and then evaporating the solvent. It has been seen that the forward-bias current–voltage (I–V) characteristics of Al/tetraamide-I/p-Si SBD with a barrier height value of 0.75 eV and an ideality factor value of 1.77 showed rectifying behaviour. The energy distribution of the interface state density determined from I–V characteristics increases exponentially with bias from 5.81 × 10 12 cm -2 eV -1 at (0.59-E v ) eV to 1.02 × 10 13 cm -2 eV -1 at (0.40-E v ) eV. It has showed that space charge limited current (SCLC) and trap charge limited current (TCLC) are the dominant transport mechanisms at large forward-bias voltages. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. PACS: 73.30.+y; 73.40.Ei; 73.40.Ns Keywords: Schottky barriers; Schottky diodes; Organic–inorganic semiconductor contact; Tetraamide-I 1. Introduction Metal–semiconductor (MS) contacts showing rectifying properties have been found wide applications in modern semiconductor device technology [1]. Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) are the basis of large number of semiconductor electronic devices, including microwave diodes, field-effect transistors (FETs), solar cells, and photodetectors [1,2]. Due to this technological importance of the SBDs, a full understand- ing of the nature of their electrical characteristics is of great interest. Many SBDs are not intimate MS contacts but have, instead, metal–interfacial layer–semiconductor structure unless specially fabricated. The existence of such an interfacial layer have strong influence on electrical characteristics of SBD. Due to the stability of nonpolymeric organic compounds, the electrical and photoelectrical properties of polymeric [3–6] ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +90 4122488228; fax: +90 4122488039. E-mail address: tahsin@dicle.edu.tr (T. Kılıc ¸o˘ glu). and nonpolymeric organic compounds [7–13] have been inves- tigated for more than the last three decades. Furthermore some scientists made many investigations on metal/nonpolymeric organic compound/semiconductor fabricated with different methods of formation of nonpolymeric organic compound at metal/semiconductor interface and then measured the ideality factor value and the barrier height value [8–11,13,14]. They showed that the interfacial layer formed at metal/semiconductor substrate has a rectification behaviour in which the values of barrier height and ideality factor are greater than the con- ventional metal/semiconductor structures [1]. Some authors have also investigated experimentally for the barrier height and ideality factor values of metal/nonpolymeric organic compound/semiconductor structures to be higher than the con- ventional metal/semiconductor structures [15,16]. This case has been attributed to the space charge region of the semiconduc- tor influenced by the interfacial layer at metal/semiconductor structures [10,15]. It is well known that the organic film forms a physical barrier between the metal and the semiconductor substrate preventing the metal directly contacted the semi- 0379-6779/$ – see front matter © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.synthmet.2007.06.001