A lucky drift model, including a soft threshold energy, fitted to experimental measurements of ionization coefficients

Abstract We have fitted the lucky drift model of impact ionization due to Burt to experimental data for GaAs, InP, Si and In 0.53 Ga 0.47 As. The agreement is surprisingly good considering the simplicity of that model. The lucky drift model has been further extended to include the effects of a soft threshold energy where carriers do not necessarily ionize immediately on achieving the threshold energy. This new lucky drift model is found to fit the same experimental data better than the model due to Burt in all cases but one.

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