Abstract
RECENTLY a new electron energy distribution in p-n junctions has been proposed1. The distribution is based on the concepts of electrostatic and diffusion2 forces and potentials. The purpose of this communication is to show that the proposed electron energy distribution, when interpreted for thin-junction p-n diodes, predicts the possibility of minority-carrier injection entirely through quantum-mechanical tunnelling. The pertinent mechanism involves the direct tunnelling of valence electrons in the n-region to the conduction band of the p-region. This injection would afterwards lead to carrier recombination and possible infra-red emission. The phenomenon of tunnelling emission has been experimentally observed in gallium arsenide by a number of authors, including Pankove3 and Archer et al.4.
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References
Melehy, M. A., Nature, 202, 864 (1964).
Melehy, M. A., Nature, 198, 980 (1963).
Pankove, J. I., Phys. Rev. Letters, 9, 283 (1962).
Archer, R. J., Leite, R. R. C., Yariv, A., Porto, S. P. S., and Whelan, J. M., Phys. Rev. Letters, 10, 483 (1963).
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MELEHY, M. Tunnelling-induced Injection in p-n Junctions. Nature 203, 1276–1277 (1964). https://doi.org/10.1038/2031276a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/2031276a0
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