Parasitic bipolar effects leading to on-state breakdown in 2D-MESFETs

Abstract

In this work we have studied and characterized the impact-ionization-induced instabilities in the output characteristics of two-dimensional MESFET s. The instabilities appear as an increase of the output conductance, gD. By performing a complete set of DC measurements at different temperature and electroluminescence measurements, in different bias conditions, we were able to correlate the kinks in the output characteristics with different impact ionization regimes, including the possible onset of a parasitic bipolar effect.