  An aluminum nitride (AlN) Schottky barrier diode (SBD) was fabricated on a
nonpolar AlN crystal grown on tungsten substrate by physical vapor transport.
The Ni/Au-AlN SBD features a low ideality factor n of 3.3 and an effective
Schottky barrier height (SBH) of 1.05 eV at room temperature. The ideality
factor n decreases and the effective SBH increases at high temperatures. The
temperature dependences of n and SBH were explained using an inhomogeneous
model. A mean SBH of 2.105 eV was obtained for the Ni-AlN Schottky junction
from the inhomogeneity analysis of the current-voltage characteristics. An
equation in which the parameters have explicit physical meanings in thermionic
emission theory is proposed to describe the current-voltage characteristics of
inhomogeneous SBDs.
