Microwave and millimeter-wave power generation in silicon carbide avalanche devices

Abstract

Silicon carbide (SiC), due to its thermal and electronic properties, has long been considered an excellent device material for microwave and millimeter-wave power generation. Numerical simulations were performed to study the typical power generating capabilities of SiC impact avalanche transit-time (IMP A TT) diodes utilizing the recent experimental data available. Operating characteristics of double-drift IMPATT devices at 10, 35, 60 and 94 GHz are compared. Both pulsed mode and continuous-wave (cw) mode operation are studied. Finally, a comparison among SiC, Si, and GaAs double-drift IMPA TT devices is made at various frequencies. It is shown that, for the pulsed mode of operation, SiC double-drift IMPA TT devices can produce significantly higher powers than Si and GaAs devices at comparable frequencies. In the cw mode of operation, SiC devices can produce significantly more power than GaAs devices at aU frequencies. However, a comparison at 94 GHz indicates that SiC IMP A TT diodes in the cw mode of operation produce power levels comparable to Si IMPA TT devices. At lower frequencies the performance of SiC diodes operating in the cw mode is expected to be better than the performance of Si devices due to the better thermal conductivity of SiC.

Microwave Absorption in Photonic Crystals Composed of SiC/Resin with a Diamond Structure

“…We have fabricated various epoxy molds with normal and inverse diamond structures using the stereolithography method, and infiltrated the molds with a mixed slurry of SiC powder and polyester. SiC has the advantage of having a high dielectric constant of about 9.7 13 and good wave absorption ability 14–17 . These diamond structures were used to investigate the microwave absorption ability at the PBG frequencies.…”

X-band Silicon Carbide IMPATT Oscillator

“…Also, it was concluded that the polytype 4H-SiC is most convenient for IMPATT diode fabrication due to the high and nearly isotropic electron mobility [6]. A number of numerical simulations [7,8] confirmed these estimations, but they did not give enough information to perform an accurate design of SiC IMPATT diodes, namely to calculate the optimal operating frequency of the structure with given doping profile. Indeed, the most important material parameter used in these numerical calculations, namely v S , was not determined accurately.…”

Influence of the anisotropy on the performance of D-band SiC IMPATT diodes

“…In this paper, numerical simulations based on a two-dimensional drift-diffusion transport model have been carried out for the 4H-SiC IMPATT diode with a high-low single drift structure. Table 1 shows the related material parameters of 4H-SiC used for device simulation at room temperature [27,28]. Electron and hole impact ionization rates are important parameters in determining the microwave output performance of the IMPATT diode.…”