Analysis of the spurious negative resistance of PN junction avalanche breakdown

The PN junction avalanche breakdown simulation with the local temperature model shows the negative resistance in the current-voltage I-V characteristics in contrast to the simulation with the local field model. We show that the negative resistance is due to the increase of the electron temperature with the reverse current increase near the depletion layer edge where the hot electrons heated in the depletion region are embedded in a large number of cold electrons. It is also shown that the negative resistance predicted by the local temperature model is spurious with the help of Tail Electron HydroDynamic (TEHD) impact ionization model which separately considers the hot carrier population.