Effect of hydrogen peroxide treatment on the characteristics of Pt Schottky contact on n -type ZnO

We report on the formation of good Pt Schottky contacts on the Zn-terminated n -type ZnO (0001) surfaces ( ∼ 2 × 10 17 cm − 3 ) using surface treatment with a hydrogen peroxide solution. The Pt contacts on organic solvent-cleaned ZnO (0001) show leaky behavior with a high leakage current of ∼ − 0.05 A under − 5 V reverse bias voltage, whereas the hydrogen peroxide-treated contacts show Schottky behavior with very low leakage current of ∼ − 6.5 × 10 − 8 A under − 5 V reverse bias voltage. Schottky barrier heights estimated from current-voltage and capacitance-voltage characteristics are 0.89 and 0.93 eV , respectively. Room-temperature photoluminescence results show that the hydrogen peroxide treatment is fairly effective in removing deep-level defects near the ZnO surface region. In addition, the preliminary deep-level transient spectroscopy result is also presented.