Its primary application is semiconductor measurements where otherwise time-consuming metallizations or photolithographic processing are required to make contact to a sample.
The mercury probe formed a Schottky barrier of well-defined area that could be measured as easily as a conventional metallized contact.
[3] The mercury probe forms a gate contact and enables measurement of the capacitance-voltage or current-voltage parameters of the mercury-oxide-semiconductor structure.
The contact area of a mercury droplet resting on a semiconductor can be modified by electrowetting,[4] meaning that accurate parameter extraction may need to take this effect into account.
These measurements are successfully made on many materials including SiC, GaAs, GaN, InP, CdS, and InSb.