Avalanche Effects in Silicon p—n Junctions. I. Localized Photomultiplication Studies on Microplasmas

An improved experimental technique is described for the investigation of carrier multiplication in very small areas, particularly microplasmas. A light spot of a few microns diameter is positioned to cover a microplasma of comparable or smaller size and the multiplied photocurrent is measured as a function of reverse voltage.When the size of the microplasma is much smaller than the light spot, then the multiplication as a function of voltage is dependent upon the characteristics of the microplasma in an upper voltage range just below the microplasma breakdown voltage. In a lower voltage range the microplasma has negligible effect on multiplication. By comparing for the upper and lower voltage ranges the behavior of the reciprocal of the multiplication factor as a function of voltage, it is possible to determine that the diameters of the area of the microplasma regions vary from less than one to more than 5 μ.Multiplication factors as high as 106 were measured. At high multiplication (M>100), a deviation f...