Haruhiko Yoshida

The interface properties of strongly correlated electron system/band semiconductor junctions were investigated in the La_1−xSr_xVO₃/p-Si(100) structure. Spectroscopic observations show that the electronic structure of the interface is typical of insulator/semiconductor junctions for x ≤ 0.2 and Schottky junctions for x ≥ 0.25. For the forward current density–bias voltage (J–V) characteristics, energy barriers that were otherwise unexplainable by spectroscopy were estimated from the thermionic emission model fitting of the J–V characteristics, indicating that the injected carriers from Si to La_1−xSr_xVO₃ can also feel the correlation force of Coulomb repulsion at the interface.

Microscopic characterization of generation lifetimes in a SiO 2 /Si structure has been carried out using scanning capacitance microscopy (SCM). Generation lifetimes could be investigated by monitoring the capacitance transient due to inversion layer formation. The validity of local capacitance transient measurements by SCM was verified by comparing with the results of conventional capacitance transient measurements using a MOS capacitor. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that SCM can be used for imaging of the formation process of the inversion layer on a nanometer scale.