Environmental conditions effect on characteristics of some unijunction and bijunction semiconductor devices

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to shed further light on the investigation of radiation effect on unijunction and bijunction semiconductor devices. The radiation damage in silicon bipolar junction transistor (BJT) and solar cell is analyzed experimentally and theoretically using computer programming. It was found that for low-frequency transistors, 90% of the damage in forward current gain occurs at low gamma-doses, around 100 krad. For solar cells, the radiation damage is attributed mainly to the change in the lifetime of minority carriers contained in the base region, which depends on both radiation fluence and energy, as well as the solar cell structure.