ELECTRICAL AND MECHANICAL RESPONSE OF ZNO NANOROD-BASED SCHOTTKY DIODES: NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION THROUGH I–V, C–V, AND WILLIAMSON–HALL ANALYSIS

Abstract

This article presents a detailed research interpretation of the electrical and mechanical response of zinc oxide nanorod-based Schottky diodes using a numerical dataset compiled from the parent thesis and reorganized for article-level analysis. The study focuses on six related performance windows: temperature-dependent current–voltage behavior, barrier-height-dependent current–voltage behavior, temperature-dependent barrier height, temperature-dependent ideality factor, capacitance–voltage response, and crystallite size–strain interaction. The analytical framework is anchored in thermionic emission for charge transport, depletion-based capacitance modeling for junction response, and Williamson–Hall analysis for microstructural strain evaluation. Across the modeled temperature interval, the forward branch preserves strong rectification while the reverse branch remains limited in magnitude, showing that the junction retains directional transport over a broad thermal range. Barrier height increases nearly linearly from 0.44 eV to 0.66 eV as temperature rises from 100 K to 600 K, while ideality factor falls from 4.91 to 0.81, revealing progressive improvement in transport regularity. Capacitance decreases from 0.003025 mF at −0.20 V to 0.002535 mF at 0.30 V, which is consistent with bias-driven depletion expansion. The strain curve shows a marked fall in strain magnitude as crystallite size increases from 5 nm to 50 nm, indicating lattice relaxation with larger coherent domains. The resulting article demonstrates that ZnO nanorod Schottky diodes provide a coherent coupled response in which junction transport, interfacial barrier control, and microstructural stability can be interpreted within one integrated framework. The results support the use of ZnO nanorod systems as promising candidates for thermally resilient and structurally interpretable Schottky devices