Influence Of Electrode Geometry On The High-field Characteristics Of Photoconductive Silicon Wafers

A series of experiment were conducted to study the influence of electrode geometry on the prebreakdown (and breakdown) characteristics of high resistivity ({rho} > 30 k{Omega}-cm), p-type Si wafers under quasi-uniform and non-uniform electric field configurations. In the quasi-uniform field configuration, the 1mm thick Si wafer was mounted between the slots of two plane parallel stainless steel disc electrodes (parallel), while the non-uniform field was obtained by mounting the wafer between two pillar-type electrodes with a hemispherical tip (pillar). The main objective of the above investigation was to verify if the uniform field configuration under a parallel system has a positive influence by reducing the field enhancement at the contact region, as opposed to the definite field enhancement present in the case of the non-uniform pillar system. Also, it was proposed to study the effect of the contact profile on the field distribution over the wafer surface and hence its influence on the high-field performance of the Si wafers.