An observation of large and long current pulses below the breakdown voltage of PIN diode

PIN diodes with high resistive n-layer exhibit very interesting pulses, whose lengths are 10 /spl mu/s-2 s and heights are 0.001/spl sim/0.25 A/cm/sup 2/ below and above the avalanche breakdown voltage (/spl ap/1400 V). Especially, large pulses (0.1/spl sim/0.25 A/cm/sup 2/) occurred at /spl ap/100 V lower voltage than the avalanche breakdown. In these operations, breakdown currents prefer some discrete values not depending on the applied voltage directly. To consider these phenomena, the author proposes a new idea that there was a stable high current density operation (1A/cm/sup 2/ order) near the avalanche breakdown voltage.