The reduction of backgating in GaAs MESFETs by impact ionization

Author

George, Peter ; Hui, Kelvin ; Ko, Ping K. ; Hu, Chenming

Author_Institution

Hewlett-Packard Co., Santa Clara, CA, USA

Volume

11

Issue

10

fYear

1990

Firstpage

434

Lastpage

436

Abstract

The reduction of drain current due to reverse substrate bias in GaAs MESFETs fabricated on EL2-compensated substrates is recovered with the application of sufficient drain bias. The recovery is shown to be due to the compensation of the negative space charge at the channel-substrate interface by holes generated by impact ionization in the MESFET channel. Illumination raises the value of drain bias needed for current recovery due to the requirement of additional hole flux to offset the effects of optically generated electrons on EL2 occupancy. Simulation results show that the channel current becomes independent of substrate bias when the bias value is sufficient to completely delete the p-type surface layer.<>

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; Schottky gate field effect transistors; gallium arsenide; impact ionisation; EL2-compensated substrates; GaAs; MESFETs; backgating; channel current; channel-substrate interface; drain current; hole flux; impact ionization; negative space charge; p-type surface layer; reverse substrate bias; sufficient drain bias; Current measurement; Electron traps; Gallium arsenide; Impact ionization; Leakage current; Lighting; MESFETs; Schottky diodes; Semiconductor device modeling; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/55.62987

Filename

62987