Impurity distribution in high-efficiency silicon avalanche diode oscillators

The influence of impurity distribution on the performance of high-efficiency silicon avalanche diode oscillators has been investigated for a number of diffusion profiles and doping densities of ionized donors. p⁺-n-n⁺mesa diodes with diameters ranging from 0.005 to 0.030 inch, were designed with abrupt, hyperabrupt, graded, and linearly graded junctions with doping densities varying from 10¹⁴to 2 × 10¹⁵cm^-3and depletion region width 4 µm ≤ W ≤ 8 µm. The devices were operated at L-band with 40 percent efficiency. The high-frequency characteristics of the avalanche devices have shown that high-efficiency performance can be achieved with complex waveforms of current.