Injection-gated DI diode with gate-controlled holding voltage

Double-injection (DI) devices consist of an anode (p
⁺
) and a cathode (n
⁺
) in a semi-insulator containing deep traps and exhibit S-type differential negative resistance (DNR) similar to SCR's under proper conditions [1]-[6]. Recently this laboratory reported a DI device with a hole emitting (p
⁺
) gate between the anode and the cathode which resulted in substantial improvement in the switching threshold voltage V
Th
as well as extreme sensitivity Of V
Th
to gate voltage [7]. A major limitation of these DI devices was Seen to be the relatively high ON state voltage. In this paper, we describe some recent results where the ON state or holding voltage V
H
is controlled by a supplementary gate bias which allows V
H
to be arbitrarily reduced to zero or even to a negative value by applying sufficiently large negative voltages to the controlling gate with respect to the cathode.