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Heterostructure potential well barrier (PWB) diodes in GaAs/ AlGaAs system operating in a similar way to Planar Doped Barrier (PDB) diodes, though exploiting a potential well to trap charge, rather than a fixed doping spike have recently been realized and reported in the literature. This paper analyses the complex operation of these devices and determines the sensitivity of the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics to various design parameters. The PWB diode displays a significant temperature sensitivity, opposite in nature to PDB temperature dependence, and this suggests the possibility of temperature stabilised hybrid designs. The active bias dependence nature of charge within the well is found to have a significant effect on the device and impacts the ideality factor, which is more bias dependent than other comparable devices such as PDBs. However, the same mechanism offers the prospect of improvement in the current asymmetry and this effect can be greatly improved upon by changing the design and shape of the potential well.

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The effect of temperature on the barrier height of a gallium arsenide (GaAs)/aluminium GaAs (AlGaAs) potential-well barrier (PWB) diodes is investigated and reported in this Letter. It was found that more electrons diffuse from the doped AlGaAs(silicon) into the undoped layers with increasing temperature, this modifies the electric field along these layers and hence the barrier height. The barrier height increases with increasing temperature at an increasing rate of 0.093-0.36 meV/K in the temperature range of 200-380 K in a similar way to the planar-doped barrier (PDB) diode. The result of the computer simulations, however, shows that the PWB diode is less sensitive than the PDB diode due to the active nature of the charge in the well.