Abstract
At low temperatures the autocatalytic process of impact ionization of shallow impurities in high purity semiconductors leads to highly nonlinear current-voltage characteristics. At a critical breakdown voltage, the impact ionization rate of impurities exceeds the capture rate of free carriers at low concentrations, yielding a rapid increase of the current for a practically constant voltage across the sample. At breakdown a strongly ionized channel is formed in the sample constituting a current filament which carries the total current [1]. Any increase of the current is then caused by lateral growth of the current filament.
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