Carrier distribution and low-field resistance in short n+-n--n+and n+-p--n+structures

In the present paper, we calculate the potential, field, and carrier distributions in short n
⁺
-n
^-
-n
⁺
and n
⁺
-p
^-
-n
⁺
devices and estimate the low-field resistance. The results of the calculations present a set of universal curves which may be used to find the minimum carrier density in the sample, the barrier height, the electric field at the boundary, etc. Our calculations show that electron injection becomes very important when the doping level is smaller than 1.5 × 10
¹⁴
(cm
^-3
). (T/300 K)/ L
²
(µm) for GaAs diodes, where
L
is the sample length. The low-field resistance of the sample is limited by the thermionic emission of the sample and by the diffusion and drift in the sample. The thermionic emission dominates at low temperatures, in short samples, and the diffusion-drift dominates in longer samples at higher temperatures. The experimental values of low-field resistance for GaAs 0.4-µm n
⁺
-n
^-
-n
⁺
devices at 77 and 300 K are in good agreement with the predicted values. The agreement is not so good for 0.25-µm devices and for n
⁺
-p
^-
-n
⁺
devices. In the latter case, the disagreement may be due to uncertainty in the doping level because the low-field resistance of the n
⁺
-p
^-
-n
⁺
structure is shown to be very sensitive to the doping level of the p-region.