Optimisation of doping profiles for mm-wave GaAs and GaN gunn diodes

Abstract

Gunn diodes play a prominent role in the development of low-cost and reliable solid-state oscillators for diverse applications, such as in the military, security, automotive and consumer electronics industries. The primary focus of the research presented here is the optimisation of GaAs and GaN Gunn diodes for mm-wave operations, through rigorous Monte Carlo particle simulations. A novel, empirical technique to determine the upper operational frequency limit of devices based on the transferred electron mechanism is presented. This method exploits the hysteresis of the dynamic velocity-field curves of semiconductors to establish the upper frequency limit of the transferred electron mechanism in bulk material that supports this mechanism. The method can be applied to any bulk material exhibiting negative differential resistance. The simulations show that the upper frequency limits of the fundamental mode of operation for GaAs Gunn diodes are between 80 GHz and 100 GHz, and for GaN Gunn diodes between 250 GHz and 300 GHz, depending on the operating conditions. These results, based on the simulated bulk material characteristics, are confirmed by the simulated mm-wave performance of the GaAs and GaN Gunn devices. GaAs diodes are shown to exhibit a fundamental frequency limit of 90 GHz, but with harmonic power available up to 186_GHz. Simulated GaN diodes are capable of generating appreciable output power at operational frequencies up to 250 GHz in the fundamental mode, with harmonic output power available up to 525 GHz. The research furthermore establishes optimised doping profiles for two-domain GaAs Gunn diodes and single- and two-domain GaN Gunn diodes. The relevant design parameters that have been optimised, are the dimensions and doping profile of the transit regions, the width of the doping notches and buffer region (for two-domain devices), and the bias voltage. In the case of GaAs diodes, hot electron injection has also been implemented to improve the efficiency and output power of the devices. Multi-domain operation has been explored for both GaAs and GaN devices and found to be an effective way of increasing the output power. However, it is the opinion of the author that a maximum number of two domains is feasible for both GaAs and GaN diodes due to the significant increase in thermal heating associated with an increase in the number of transit regions. It has also been found that increasing the doping concentration of the transit region exponentially over the last 25% towards the anode by a factor of 1.5 above the nominal doping level enhances the output power of the diodes.