Theory of switching in p-n-insulator (tunnel)-metal devices: Part I: Punchthrough mode

The four-layered structure (M-I(leaky)-n-p⁺) is found to exhibit a current-controlled negative resistance region in its I-V characteristics. In this paper, a quantitative physical model of the device in the punch-through mode is presented. The negative resistance behaviour is due to a positive feedback mechanism between the tunnel MIS and the n-p⁺ junction parts of the device. The effect of the device parameters on its I-V characteristics is studied.     

Voltage dependence of the differential capacitance of a p +-n junction

The dependences of the differential capacitance and current of a p ⁺-n junction with a uniformly doped n region on the voltage in the junction region are calculated. The p ⁺-n junction capacitance controls the charge change in the junction region taking into account a change in the electric field of the quasi-neutral n region and a change in its bipolar drift mobility with increasing excess charge-carrier concentration. It is shown that the change in the sign of the p ⁺-n junction capacitance with increasing injection level is caused by a decrease in the bipolar drift mobility as the electron-hole pair concentration in the n region increases. It is shown that the p ⁺-n junction capacitance decreases with increasing reverse voltage and tends to a constant positive value.     

Theory of open circuit voltage decay in a p-n junction diode at high injection

A high injection theory of open circuit voltage decay in a p-n junction diode is given. The theory takes into account the saturation of junction voltage at high injections and coupling between emitter and base of the diode. The results are in qualitative agreement with the available experimental results. In particular the theory explains the plateau which has been observed in most experimental results on the open circuit voltage decay at high injections.     

Potential and limitations of Schottky-barrier barritt devices

Computer simulation of various Schottky-barrier structures is carried out to investigate the large-signal properties of these devices. Comparison between Schottky-barrier devices and their p-n junction counterparts are also made to evaluate the potential and limitations of these devices and to explain the difference in performance between them. It is shown that among various Schottky-barrier structures, the M-n-i-p⁺ structure is the most powerful one and the M-n-p-p⁺ device is the most efficient one. Furthermore, Schottky-barrier devices with low barrier heights for minority carriers (less than 0.2 eV) are capable of producing power levels close to the generated power of p-n junction devices. Investigation of the temperature dependence of the large-signal performance of these devices shows that Schottky barriers are more sensitive and exhibit their optimum performance close to room temperature value. At low temperature, the output power is limited by the low minority carrier injection, whereas at high temperature the limitation is due to the velocity-modulation losses in the injection and low-field regions of the device.     

Effect of double reflection on the forward current-voltage characteristics of a silicon p+-s-n+ epitaxial diode

The behaviour of both majority and minority carriers in a p⁺-s-n⁺ epitaxial diode (where s may be p or n) has been investigated in this paper. Forward current-voltage characteristics of the diodes are obtained by exact numerical analysis, taking into account the effects of energy-gap narrowing, Auger recombination and carrier-carrier scattering. As with previous authors, it is found that the forward current increases with increasing middle layer thickness. The present analysis shows that such increase occurs only upto a specific applied bias, after which the forward current decreases with increasing middle layer thickness. This behaviour is attributed to double reflection, i.e. the reflection of both majority and minority carriers by the p-n junction and high-low junction respectively. Beyond the specific bias so determined, junction reflection loses its effectiveness. Distribution of carrier concentration and junction voltages for several device configurations are given to illustrate these features. The majority carrier reflection by the p-n junction is found to have a dominating effect in all cases.     

A structure-oriented model for determining the substrate spreading resistance in bulk CMOS latch-up paths and its application in holding current prediction

A structure-oriented model has been developed to simulate the actual distribution of majority-carrier current flow paths in the substrate when the parasitic p-n-p-n structure with long-stripe geometry in a CMOS (complementary metal—oxide-semiconductor) circuit is at the latch-up state. Based on this structure-oriented model, the voltage drop across the latch-up path in the substrate can be calculated directly from the structure data. Therefore, the equivalent emitter-base shunting resistance in the substrate can be easily obtained and used to accurately predict the holding current. The two-dimensional numerical simulations have been carried out, based on this structure-oriented model, to obtain the emitter-base shunting resistance associated with the parasitic lateral bipolar transistor in the substrate. The computed substrate shunting resistance and the well emitter-base shunting resistance have been used to calculate the holding current with the help of the measured peak parasitic transistor gains. The predicted holding currents have been found to be in good agreement with the experimental data measured from several p-n-p-n structures, including normal and reversed layouts which are all designed by using the long-stripe geometries. Furthermore, the numerical simulations have been extended to predict the effects of the layout changes of the p-n-p-n structures on the latch-up susceptibility.     

Striations als ursache von knickstellen in pn-//übergängen von leistungsbauelementen

On chemically etched cross-sections of high-voltage power thyristors both p-n junctions adjoining the slightly doped middle zone revealed numerous kinks which appeared more frequently at the rim of the cross-section than in the middle section. These variations of the p-n junction could be related to striations which in this case are caused by microscopic variations of the phosphorus concentration of the used starting silicon. It is shown that striations intersect the p-n junction at such kinks and that in this case striations are locations of abrupt resistivity variations of the silicon. The deviation of the p-n junction at such kinks caused by striations can amount to 10 μm. This corresponds to a variation of the resistivity (//?_max/?inmin) by a factor of 3. Recent results from spreading resistance measurements of the ?-variations in striated silicon are compatible therewith.     

A low-high-junction solar-cell model developed for use in tandem cell analysis

A comprehensive low-high (L-H) junction solar cell model has been developed. It accounts for actual solar spectrum related photogeneration of carriers in all regions of the n-p-p⁺ cell and allows for any value of rear surface-recombination-velocity (SRV). In typical GaAs L-H junction solar cells, photogeneration in the p⁺ region, but not the p region, is found to be negligible. The L-H junction's space-charge-layer recombination current density is also negligible. Assigning a non-infinite value of rear surface SRV makes this model applicable to tandem multi-junction structures made from materials with different band gaps.     

On the forward current-voltage characteristics of p+-n-n+ (n+-p-p+) epitaxial diodes

The forward-biased current-voltage characteristics of p⁺-n-n⁺ and n⁺-p-p⁺ epitaxial diodes are derived theoretically. Effects of the energy-gap shrinkage, the high-low junction built-in voltage, the high-level injection, and the minority-carrier life time on the forward-biased current-voltage characteristics are included. Good agreements between the theoretically derived results and the experimental data of Dutton et al. are obtained. The developed theory predicts that the leakage of the high-low junction is dominated by the recombination of minority carriers in the highly doped substrate, not by the recombination of minority carriers in the high-low space charge region, which is opposite to the previous prediction of Dutton et al.     

An extension of the ideal diode analysis for the heavily doped p-n diode

In this paper, an extension of the ideal-diode analysis for the heavily-doped p-n junction diode is proposed. The heavy doping effects such as carrier degeneracy and band gap narrowing are accounted for by using a tractable empirical approximation for the reduced Fermi-energy given by[12] and employing effective intrinsic density. Under the assumption of low-level injection, it is found that the injected minority-carrier current, and the charge storage in the quasi-neutral regions should depend exponentially on values of F(Y), where F(Y) is a function of dopant dentisy at the depletion edge of the quasi-neutral emitter (or) base region of the p-n junction. Results of our calculations of excess hole current for the short base and the long-base diode show significant change from the values predictged by the conventional diode theory.     

Hot photo-carrier and hot electron effects in p-n junctions

When a p-n junction of semiconductor (with bandgap energy E_g) is illuminated by light beam (with photon energy hv) in the condition of E_g>hv, such as in Ge p-n junction illuminated by CO₂ laser beam, an electromotive force (emf) was induced between the terminals of the p-n junction, which indicated the opposite polarity to the ordinary photovoltaic effect like a solar cell. Such an anomalous photovoltaic phenomenon was explained by an optically excited hot carrier effect, through the following experiment with electrical excitation. Using a rod of n- or p-type Ge with a p-n junction at the surface of its center and an ohmic contact at each terminal of the rod, the same kind of phenomena was observed when electric field is applied along the length of the rod. The perpendicularly induced voltage or current had the same polarity instead of the reverse change of the applied electric field, and increases with increasing the applied field strength. The perpendicularly induced emf was caused by warm or hot carriers crossing the potential barrier of the p-n junction, which is very sensitive to the departure from thermally equilibrium velocity distribution of carriers.     

Equivalent circuits for transients in p-n junctions and solar cells with their application to methods for minority carrier life-time measurements

Equivalent circuits corresponding to series solutions obtainable under various operating conditions of p-n junctions and solar cells are given. These circuits are directly applicable to the small signal impedance measurements. The transient behaviour of the p-n junction devices during minority carrier lifetime determination experiments has also been explained successfully with the help of these circuits. This provides a better insight towards the physical processes involved in these methods and interpretation of the various experimental results becomes easier.     

Famos—A new semiconductor charge storage device

A new non-volatile charge storage device is described. The floating gate avalanche injection MOS (FAMOS) structure is a p-channel silicon gate field effect transistor in which no electric contact is made to the silicon gate. It combines the floating gate concept with avalanche injection of electrons from the surface depletion region of a p-n junction to yield reproducible charging characteristics with long term storage retention.     

Open circuit voltage decay in p-n junction diodes at high levels of injection

The open circuit voltage decay (OCVD) in p-n junction diodes at high levels of injection is discussed in this paper. Theoretical results are given for thick base diodes and for BSF solar cells including the effect of recombination in the emitter. It is found that the recombination in the emitter becomes important at high levels of injection and makes the voltage decay faster. The experimental results in BSF solar cells at high levels of injection are also reported and found to be in good agreement with the theoretical results derived in this paper.     

Drift of the breakdown voltage in p-n junctions in silicon (walk-out)

A quantitative model for the time behaviour of the walk-out phenomenon in planar p-n junctions is given. The injection of hot carriers into SiO₂ and subsequent trapping of part of them is assumed to be the origin of the walk-out. The model is found to be in reasonable agreement with the experimental results on both p⁺?n and n⁺?p junctions. The parameters in the model are discussed in relation with the experiments.     

Silicon solar cells using natural inversion layers found in thermally-oxidized p-silicon

Inversion layer silicon solar cells are described which employ the natural inversion layer occurring at the surface of thermally-oxidized p-type silicon as one side of an induced n-p junction. Very shallow junctions are predicted theoretically with high electric fields in a direction to aid the collection of carriers generated by light of ultra-violet wavelengths. Collection efficiency calculations show the inversion layer cell to be less sensitive to lifetime and surface recombination velocity variations than diffused junction cells. Experimental 2 cm × 2 cm cells have been fabricated with the inversion layer contacted via a fine diffused n⁺ grid overlaid with a Ni-Cu-Au contact. The contact grid, specially designed to minimize the effect of the high inversion layer sheet resistance, produced a total shading of 16%. Illuminated I-V measurements confirm the induced junction to be near ideal, with an ideality factor $\text{A ? 1.05}$ and a reverse saturation current approaching that predicted theoretically. Conversion efficiencies of ? 8% have been obtained, with no special precautions being taken to reduce the series resistance of the back contact, or reflections at the front surface.     

Breakdown walkout in planar p-n junctions

Junction breakdown walkout in p-n junctions has been investigated in this paper. It has been shown that walkout is closely related to the avalanching in the junction. During the time the junction is subjected to the reverse breakdown, because of avalanching, hot electrons are generated in the depletion region. Some of the hot electrons have enough energy to cross the oxide-silicon barrier and to go into the conduction band of the oxide. The electrons are trapped in the traps and charge the oxide negatively, resulting in reduction of electric field intensity in the surface depletion region of the p-n junction. This results in an increase of the breakdown voltage. A theory has been developed to explain hot electron injection and trapping in the oxide and its effect on the breakdown voltage. A comparison of results predicted by theory, with the experiments has also been carried out.     

Alteration of diffusion profiles in semiconductors due to p-n junctions

Concentration profiles of diffusing species in semiconductors are calculated including the effects of the electric fields at p-n junctions. The junction electric field can significantly alter diffusion behavior near the junction at the growth temperature, and thus affect dopant uniformity and junction placement for some commonly occurring epitaxial growth conditions. The junction electric field affects diffusion in the same manner as the internal electric field that results from a dopant concentration gradient. The field can produce diffusion profiles with either enhanced or retarded diffusion rates at the junction and pile-up or depletion of the diffusing species near the junction. Several experimental examples for diffusion of Mg across a p-n junction in (Al, Ga). As during growth by liquid phase epitaxy are presented.     

On the small-signal equivalent circuit of p-n junctions in the condition of finite carriers multiplication

A new version of the equivalent circuit of the space-charge region of the reverse biased p-n junction is evaluated and the expressions for the circuit parameters are given. The basic idea is to separate the equivalent circuit in to the “conductive” and “displacement” branches and in this way the equivalent circuit parameters have physical meaning. The results are applicable to conditions of the finite multiplication factors and unequal ionization coefficients in a wide range of frequency and in the presence of the generation of carriers (thermal or outside induced) in the space-charge region. The numerical results for two complementary abrupt silicon p-n junctions and for low-frequency are given. The equivalent circuit of the multiplication noise source of the p-n junction is discussed.     

Silicon p−n insulator-metal (p-n-I-M) devices

Silicon p-n-I-M devices with thin insulating layers ($\text{thicknesses}\text{? 30}\text{A}\text{?}$), named MTIS devices, have been developed. The two terminal device shows an S-shaped negative resistance characteristics similar to a Schockley diode (or p-n-p-n diode). Typically the threshold and sustaining voltages are 10 ～ 15 and 1.3 ～ 2 volts, respectively. The former however can be controlled by optical illumination. Turn-on time including delay is less than 2 nsec and turn-off time ? 1 nsec or less. A thyristor-like device with its third terminal connected to the n-layer shows switching operation controllable by this terminal. A monolithic linear array of p-n-I-M diodes with 30 μm spacing operates as a shift register through coupling of adjacent diodes. Life of the two terminal devices recorded at present is over 1.5 × 10⁴ hr. These devices can be applied to low power and high-speed electrical switching and also to optical switching and integrated logic circuits.