Amorphous germanium contacts on germanium detectors

The rectification properties of sputtered amorphous germanium contacts made under a variety of conditions on germanium detectors have been measured as a function of temperature and electric field. The leakage current increased as a function of voltage above depletion voltage. The rectifying amorphous–crystalline heterojunction theory derived by Döhler and Brodsky describes the behavior well. Values of barrier height were measured to be ∼0.30–0.35 eV and the density of states was found to be NF∼1018 eV−1 cm−3.