PN Junction Local Avalanche Breakdown Induced Microplasma Noise In Semiconductor GaAsP Diodes

PN Junction Local Avalanche Breakdown Induced Microplasma Noise In Semiconductor GaAsP Diodes

Paper in proceedings (conference paper)

Random two-level or multiple-level current impulses may occur in electronic devices containing re-verse biased p-n junctions in a certain operating mode. These impulses are usually rectangular, fea-turing constant amplitude, random pulse width and pulse origin time points. This phenomenon is generally ascribed to local avalanche breakdowns originating in p-n junction defect regions called microplasma regions. Based on experiment results, a two-state model of stochastic generation-recombination process has been elaborated for the two-level impulse noise allowing to derive some statistical characteristics of this process. It can be shown that the distribution of the probability den-sity w(0) of the impulse separation 0 and the probability density w(1) of the impulse width 1 have exponential courses. The power spectral density of the noise current is of a G-R process type and de-pends on the particular microplasma properties. From the viewpoint of noise diagnostics, the most important features are the spectral density Su and noise current IN versus reverse current IR plots, be-cause each local extreme of these plots corresponds to an active microplasma region. Thus obtained results may be used for p-n junction non-destructive diagnostics and quality assessment.

Random two-level or multiple-level current impulses may occur in electronic devices containing re-verse biased p-n junctions in a certain operating mode. These impulses are usually rectangular, fea-turing constant amplitude, random pulse width and pulse origin time points. This phenomenon is generally ascribed to local avalanche breakdowns originating in p-n junction defect regions called microplasma regions. Based on experiment results, a two-state model of stochastic generation-recombination process has been elaborated for the two-level impulse noise allowing to derive some statistical characteristics of this process. It can be shown that the distribution of the probability den-sity w(0) of the impulse separation 0 and the probability density w(1) of the impulse width 1 have exponential courses. The power spectral density of the noise current is of a G-R process type and de-pends on the particular microplasma properties. From the viewpoint of noise diagnostics, the most important features are the spectral density Su and noise current IN versus reverse current IR plots, be-cause each local extreme of these plots corresponds to an active microplasma region. Thus obtained results may be used for p-n junction non-destructive diagnostics and quality assessment.

Microplasma noise, Local avalanche breakdown, LED diodes, Reliability

KOKTAVÝ, P., ŠIKULA, J.

22.10.2001

University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA

Gainesville, Florida, USA

981-02-4677-3

Proceedings of ICNF 2001

193

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