A parameter extraction method of the PIN diode for physics-based circuit simulation over a wide frequency range

摘要

The accurate physical parameters of the semiconductor devices are critical to the physics-based circuit simulation, which solves the carrier transport equations to model the semiconductor devices. However, the conventional method extracts physical parameters from low-frequency measurements such as the DC I-V curve, which cannot work at high frequencies. To overcome this problem, we propose a physical parameter extraction method of the PIN diode working well from DC to microwave frequencies. Specifically, because the transit-time effects are dependent on the working frequencies and input power levels, the operation modes of the PIN diode can be divided into three cases from DC to microwave frequencies; therefore, the proposed method extracts the parameters from three measured curves, including the DC Ⅰ-Ⅴ curve, a small-signal, and a large-signal voltage waveform both at a microwave frequency. Experiments of a PIN diode SMP1330 circuit show that the error of the conventional method is about 45% at frequencies above 300 MHz, but the maximum error of the proposed method is only 9.5% from DC to 2 GHz. Moreover, the conventional method is unable to characterize the conductance modulation phenomenon, which leads to unexpected signal reflections in PIN limiter circuits and the missing of information in radio transceivers.