Direct current electrical conduction mechanism in plasma polymerized thin films of tetraethylorthosilicate

The plasma polymerized tetraethylorthosilicate (PPTEOS) thin films were deposited on to glass substrates at room temperature by a parallel plate capacitively coupled glow discharge reactor. The current density-voltage (J-V) characteristics of PPTEOS thin films of different thicknesses have been observed at different temperatures in the voltage region from 0.2 to 15 V. In the J-V curves two slopes were observed — one in the lower voltage region and another in the higher voltage region. The voltage dependence of current density at the higher voltage region indicates that the mechanism of conduction in PPTEOS thin films is space charge limited conduction. The carrier mobility, the free carrier density and the total trap density have been calculated out to be about 2.80 × 10^− 15m²V^− 1s^− 1, 1.50 × 10²²m^− 3 and 4.16 × 10³³m^− 3 respectively from the observed data. The activation energies are estimated to be about 0.13 ± 0.05 and 0.46 ± 0.07 eV in the lower and higher temperature regions respectively for an applied voltage of 2 V and 0.09 ± 0.03 and 0.43 ± 0.10 eV in the lower and higher temperature regions respectively for an applied voltage of 14 V. The conduction in PPTEOS may be dominated by hopping of carriers between the localized states at the low temperature and thermally excited carriers from energy levels within the band gap in the vicinity of high temperature.