NOISE AND CORRELATION-FUNCTIONS OF HOT CARRIERS IN SEMICONDUCTORS

We present a unifying theory of electronic noise appropriate to semiconductor materials in the presence of electric fields of arbitrary strength. In addition to thermal noise, a classification scheme for excess noise indicating different microscopic sources of fluctuations responsible for number and mobility fluctuations is provided. On the basis of simple two-level models, numerical calculations using a Monte Carlo technique are performed for the case of p-type Si at 77 K. The primary quantity which is evaluated by the theory is the auto-correlation function of current fluctuations which, subsequently, is analyzed in terms of correlation functions of the relevant physical variables. Accordingly, the corresponding current spectral-densities are determined and then compared with direct experimental results and/or analytical expressions. Important subjects which have been investigated are: (i) the effect of field assisted ionization on generation-recombination noise from shallow impurity levels; (ii) the contribution to the total noise spectrum of cross-correlation terms coupling fluctuations in velocity with those in energy and number; (iii) the current random telegraph signal and the corresponding spectral density associated with a mobility fluctuator. In all cases the numerical calculations are found to be in satisfactory agreement with experiments and/or analytical expressions thus fully supporting the physical reliability of the theoretical approach here proposed.