Depletion MOS Controlled Current Regulator Diode Based on Bipolar Carrier Transport

A depletion MOS controlled (DMC) current regulator diode (CRD) based on bipolar carrier transport mechanism is proposed and experimentally demonstrated in this paper. Compared with the conventional CRD based on unipolar junction field effect transistor, DMC CRD features a highly doped p-type substrate. On the one hand, the P
⁺
substrate provides hole injection, which makes the output characteristics of DMC CRD resemble a PIN rectifier when operating in the linear region with a small anode voltage. Accordingly, DMC CRD gets a large slope of output characteristic to realize a lower knee voltage (VK) in comparison to the conventional CRD for a same anode current. On the other hand, the P
⁺
substrate and N-type epitaxial layer can form a reverse PN junction to withstand a high reverse breakdown voltage, which allows DMC CRD to be applied in AC circuit. The initial experimental result demonstrates that a low VK of 1.2 V and a high reverse breakdown voltage (BVR) above 250 V are achieved in a 30-mA-level DMC CRD.