PROPERTIES OF AlInN GRADED-GAP GUNN DIODES

摘要

Semiconductor nitrides are promising materials for high-performance solid-state electronic devices, including those based on the effect of inter-valley transfer of electrons. However, due to various reasons, which are high power consumption and complexity of the heat removal from the device active region, the scientific literature contains no experimental details on electromagnetic oscillations generation by means of the GaN or InN Gunn diodes. Firstly, this paper proposes the idea to reduce power consumption and improve the efficiency of the Gunn diodes; secondly, reports the results on the numerical experiments on generation using the Gunn diodes based on graded-gap AlInN, thirdly, contains the values of the optimized parameters and the output characteristics of diodes with different cathode contacts in a broad range of frequencies. Diodes performance is considered for harmonic and bi-harmonic modes. The study showed that the graded-gap AlInN exceed InN and AlN Gunn-diodes of the same type on the generation efficiency, output power and maximum operating frequency, which amounted to 0.9÷1.3 THz at the length of the active region of 0.15 μm. The consumption power of graded-gap AlInN diodes is 3÷20% less than the consumption power of InN diodes. Presented results extend the knowledge about the physical processes of charge transport in complex semiconductor structures and can be used for basic development of new high-speed devices based on semiconductor nitrides.