Microplasmas in Silicon p-n Junctions

Abstract

Experiments are made on the microplasma pulses at the onset of avalanche breakdown in silicon p-n junctions. Critical experiments show that the carrier multiplication process is the most important in the turn-on probabilities, which are determined to vary exponentially with the applied voltage. The turn-off probability is qualitatively explainable by McIntyre's theory. The dimension and other characteristics of a microplasma region are also discussed. Rates of variation of the breakdown voltage with temperature and pressure are calculated under the assumption that hot electrons are predominantly scattered by optical phonons. The calculated results agree well with observations.