Sources of 1/F noise in gallium arsenide IMPATT diodes

The quasistatic approximation is used to analyze 1/F noise in IMPATT diodes in the static and dynamic (seif-oscillating) modes. Sources of 1/F noise are defined in accordance with the fluctuator model: allowance is made for fluctuations of the charge of traps and fluctuations of the electron drift velocity caused by their scattering by traps and metastable neutral centers. It is shown that the fluctuations of the voltage across the diode and the fluctuations of the oscillation frequency are mainly determined by the fluctuations of the trap charge, while the fluctuations of the oscillation amplitude are determined by scattering by neutral centers. A method is developed to determine the intensity of noise sources using the results of measurements of the fluctuations in the static and dynamic modes of IMPATT diodes and a method of checking the model as a whole is checked. Experimental results are presented and these show satisfactory agreement with the calculations. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.