Prospects of gallium nitride double drift region mixed tunneling avalanche transit time diodes for operation in F, Y and THz bands

Abstract

The potential of GaN as a wide band gap semiconductor is explored for application as double drift region mixed tunneling avalanche transit time (MITATT) diodes for operation at 120 GHz, 220 GHz and 0.35 THz using some computer simulation methods developed by our group. The salient features of our results have uncovered some peculiarities of the GaN based MITATT devices. An efficiency of more than 20% right up to a frequency of 0.35 THz (from the GaN MITATT diode) seems highly encouraging but a power output of only 0.76 W is indicative of its dismal fate. The existence of a noise measure minimum at the operating frequency of 0.35 THz is again exhilarating but the value of the minimum is miserably high i.e. more than 33 dB. Thus, although GaN is a wide band gap semiconductor, the disparate carrier velocities prevent its full potential from being exploited for application as MTATT diodes.