Tunnel diode with tunneling characteristic at reverse bias

摘要

1,075,176. Semi-conductor devices. INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION. June 29, 1964 [June 28, 1963]. No. 26780/64. Heading H1K. A tunnel diode with a V-I characteristic of the general form shown in Fig. 7 is made by a two-stage alloying process on a heavily doped, e.g. 0À006 ohm/cm., but non-degenerate germanium body. In the first stage, a sphere of lead-antimony alloy (2% by weight antimony) is alloyed to it at a temperature of 750‹ C. sustained for 2 hours in a hydrogen/nitrogen atmosphere. After cooling slowly a smaller sphere of lead-gallium alloy (0.2%[ gallium) is placed on the remains of the first sphere, alloyed for 1 hour at 650‹ C., and then slowly cooled. After etching the device has the illustrated I-V characteristic between electrodes attached to the body and sphere residue respectively, the positive quadrant corresponding to a positive potential on the body electrode. This is attributed to formation by impurity segregation of a pair of PN junctions during the second alloying stage.