On the nature of leakage current of fast recovery silicon pn junctions

Some experimental facts related to electron irradiated or gold doped silicon p-n junctions are presented. After junction irradiation, the reverse recovery time decreases more than order of magnitude but the reverse current increase is not more than twice near room temperature. The behavior of such junctions from room temperature up to 320/spl deg/C reveals that present-day manufactured fast recovery junctions, may be dominated by a higher peripheral surface leakage current than for similar standard junctions, both at reverse bias and low forward bias.