Negative differential conductivity and isothermal drain breakdown of the GaAs MESFET

Physical Limitations of Semiconductor Devices

“…Thus, NDC regions of the investigated MODFET structures are caused by the same parasitic avalanche-injection conductivity modulation of the semi-insulating GaAs layer [155,156]. The instability is not directly dependent on the gate avalanche breakdown, and the maximum drain voltage increases with gate bias from 0 V to the pinch-off condition despite the gate current increase.…”

“…is a smooth function of coordinate with the simple function of ioniza- 115 breakdown is related to the presence of various uncontrolled structural defects and nonuniformities in the structure, for example nonuniformity of ρ along the p-n junction that may result in E nonuniformity and provide local multiplication due to the sharp dependence g(E).…”

“…A detailed physical understanding of the electrical burnout in MESFETs was obtained from the reversible pulsed measurements of S-shape output I-V characteristics, electroluminescence [154,155] followed by numerical simulation of the instability [156,157] and filamentation [158,159]. 5.2 Drain-Source Avalanche-Injection Instability and Filamentation 177 sible failure [139,146,147].…”

Comparison of ESD protection capability of lateral BJT, SCR and bidirectional. SCR for hi-voltage BiCMOS circuits

“…The principal physical mechanism of the conductivity modulation is different for both types of structures. Simple analysis of the electric field and carrier density depth profiles demonstrates that the snapback operation of NPN BJT involves avalanche-injection conductivity modulation [4,5] that realizes the positive feedback between the avalanche multiplication in the collector junction and subsequent electric field reconstruction [6]. The following holding voltage in high conductivity state is determined by the level of the carrier mutual space charge neutralization, i.e.…”

Microplasma and uniform MESFET gate breakdown

“…The used in this study two-dimensional quasi hydrodynamic model and calculation procedure is presented in [4], The MESFET structure with the surface depletion layer is calculated (Fig.4a). Current instability and microplasma formation are calculated for the M-n-n+ structure (Fig.4b).…”