Picosecond-switching time of In/sub 0.53/Ga/sub 0.47/As/AlAs resonant-tunneling diodes measured by electro-optic sampling technique

To demonstrate picosecond-switching time for In/sub 0.53/Ga/sub 0.47/As/AlAs resonant-tunneling diodes (RTD's), we fabricated RTD's with various barrier widths and measured their switching times using electro-optic sampling technique specially arranged for RTD's with high current density. For an RTD having the barrier width of 1.4 nm with the peak current density of 4.5/spl times/10/sup 5/ A/cm/sup 2/ and peak-to-valley ratio of 3.9, the switching time of 2.2 ps has been observed.