The electrical characteristics of cermet-silicon contacts

The conductance and capacitance of metal/cermet/n-Si sandwiches has been found to be strongly dependent on the metal content of the cermet. Conductive cermets behave essentially as series resistors. Insulating cermets give rise to some Si surface inversion, and the surface minority carrier density varies with bias. This and the cermet capacitance results in a large dispersion of the measured capacitance with frequency and bias. In addition, metal particles in the cermet were found to trap charges, which then induced minority carrier charges at the interface and gave rise to a memory effect.