CURRENT INSTABILITY IN THE SINGLE BARRIER HETEROSTRUCTURE HOT-ELECTRON DIODE

The transport through a single barrier heterostructure hot-electron di ode (HHED) was studied both experimentally and by a Monte Carlo simula tion emphasizing the S-shaped current-voltage characteristics and the dynamics of the related instability. For a MBE grown n(-)-GnAs/AlGaAs/ n(+)-GaAs structure tunable relaxation oscillations with frequencies u p to 0.5 GHz have been observed at room temperature. It was numericall y shown that the maximum generation frequency of the device is limited to less than 10 GHz by a slow dispersal of the space charge accumulat ed at the n(-)-GaAs/AlGaAs interface.