Temperature Dependence of Basic Characteristics of Semiconducting Detectors and Mixers Using the Hot Electron Effect

Summary form only given. The high sensitivity of the electric properties of semiconductors to temperature is one of the basic sources of measurement errors in detectors and mixers that use the hot electron effect. This high sensitivity limits the fields of application of these convenient, often irreplaceable, diagnostic devices. We present possible circuits for such devices that greatly reduce the sensitivity of their detector characteristics to variations in outer and inner temperature. Instead of holding voltage at the devices constant we use supplies providing the true size and shape of pulses minimizing measurement errors, and to simply device calibration. The effect of stabilization is based on mutually opposed temperature dependences of the resistance at low current and of the coefficient of the cubic nonlinearity in the I-V characteristics of a number of semiconducting materials. We consider several circuits of the thermally stabilized diagnostic devices and their experimentally determined basic characteristics. It is shown that their detector characteristics are practically unchanged even for significant temperature variations.