Abstract
In contrast to thick insulator structures, metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) diodes with very thin insulating layers (< 30 Å for the silicon-silicon dioxide system) allow appreciable tunnel current flow between the metal and the semiconductor causing the semiconductor to depart significantly from thermal equilibrium conditions when the diode is biased. Under such conditions, recent experiments have demonstrated that multiplication of minority carrier current can occur in the contact region. This multiplication process is described in detail by deriving analytical expressions characterizing this process and its dependence upon the metal, insulator, and semiconductor parameters for one specific class of diode. Numerical methods are used to investigate the multiplication properties under more general conditions. Solutions obtained by this method indicate that values of the small signal multiplication factor, M, in the range of 10 2–10 3 can be obtained with appropriately designed diodes. The applications of the multiplication process to a transistor structure and to a photodiode with internal multiplication properties are described briefly.
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