Toward Reduced Interface Contact Resistance: Controllable Surface Energy of Sb₂Te₃ Films via Tuning the Crystallization and Orientation

The electrical contact resistance between a metal and semiconductor is one of the keys to improving the output performance of thin-film thermoelectric devices. Herein, we reduced the interface contact resistance by controlling the surface energy of a Sb₂Te₃ semiconductor via tuning of the crystallization and orientation, preparing an intrinsically compact and flat Sb₂Te₃ film with high surface energy and low roughness, which can give rise to a low average specific contact resistivity (8.2 × 10^-6 Ω cm²) 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.