On impact ionization and avalanche in gallium nitride

Abstract

This paper is dedicated to discussing the physics and applications of avalanche on III-Nitrides, primarily using Gallium Nitride as the example. Understanding the breakdown phenomenon in wide bandgap materials is of great interest to the device and circuit community as it directly impacts design and applications with these emerging semiconductors. In this paper, first, we go over the various approaches that have been reported on estimating the impact ionization coefficients in GaN, then discuss about the estimation of the critical electric field for punch-through and non-punch-through designs, and, finally, go over two avalanche-based devices that we have recently demonstrated.