INSTABILITIES AND TURBULENCE IN SEMICONDUCTORS

A stability calculation shows that a special type of pinch‐like instabilities appears at potential barriers in semiconductors, as well as in ionized gases. These “magnetic barrier instabilities” produce turbulence in the plasma of current carriers. The form and the frequency‐limits of the resulting turbulence or noise‐spectrum permit an explanation of flicker noise. Furthermore the result of a calculation yielding instabilities of the thermal conduction at potential barriers in semiconductors with free terminals is discussed. Like the instabilities of the electric conduction we mentioned, they result from the usual macroscopic‐phenomenological equations, but in contrast to the magnetic ones these “thermal barrier instabilities” appear only in special conditions. Copyright © 1968 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim