Toward Reduced Interface Contact Resistance: Controllable Surface Energy of Sb<sub>2</sub>Te<sub>3</sub> Films via Tuning the Crystallization and Orientation
Bohan Zhang, Wei Zhu, Lili Cao, Yuedong Yu, Dongli Qin, Xin Huang, Yuan Deng
Abstract
) with a Ni/Cu metal. The improvement in interface electrical properties is due to the increase in the surface energy and decrease in the surface roughness of the semiconductor surface, which lead to a transformation from three-dimensional island-shaped nucleation to two-dimensional layered nucleation for surface-attached metal films, forming a longitudinally tight connection contact with a low resistance. This approach allows the resistivity to become close to the fundamental theoretically calculated limit. Our work provides a new idea for reducing the contact resistivity of thin-film thermoelectric devices, which is conducive to supporting the development of thermoelectric semiconductor planarization.