Measurements of multiplication effects on noise in silicon avalanche diodes

Scanning electron microscopy study of the avalanche multiplication factor

“…1 shows the variation of the multiplication factor over the active area of a guard-ring n+-p silicon diode for several values of electron beam voltage. At the beam energies of 8 and 15 keV, the regions of high multiplication correspond to small-area microplasmas; similar observations have been made using a focused light beam [3], [5]. The apparent disappearance of these nonuniformities as the beam energy increases results from a decrease in the spatial resolving capability of the electron beam probe.…”

“…The principal advantage of this approach is its numerical efficiency. the so-called "Wiener-Hopf geometry," Recently, the modified residue calculus technique (MRCT) was introduced and successfully applied to a much wider class of structures that are modifications of the basic Wiener-Hopf geometry [2E [3].…”

“…The experimental technique is essentially the same as the chopped light-beam method [2], [3], except that a submicron-diameter electron beam of a scanning electron microscope was substituted for the focused light beam. For measurement at low beam currents, the beam was modulated at 15 kHz using electrostatic deflection plates, and the sample current was synchronously detected by a lock-in amplifier.…”