DC AND LARGE-SIGNAL TIME-DEPENDENT ELECTRON-TRANSPORT IN HETEROSTRUCTURE DEVICES - AN INVESTIGATION OF THE HETEROSTRUCTURE BARRIER VARACTOR

The de and large-signal time-dependent electron transport properties of Heterostructure Barrier Varactors () are investigated using a physical model which combines drift-diffusion current transport through the heterostructure bulk with thermionic and thermionic-field emission currents imposed at the abrupt heterointerfaces in a fully self-consistent manner. A fast and accurate hydrodynamic device simulator for generic unipolar InGaAs/InAlAs on InP, InGaAs/InP on InP, and GaAs/InGaAs/AlGaAs on GaAs has been developed based on this model, The experimentally observed current-voltage and capacitance-voltage characteristics of GaAs/AlGaAs and GaAs/InGaAs/AlGaAs are compared with the simulated results over a wide range of de bias, Large-signal time-dependent simulations at a pump frequency of 100 GHz confirm the odd-harmonic operation of these devices and indicate that multiple barrier should provide efficient frequency multiplication, especially in high order frequency multipliers, broadband frequency triplers, and quasi-optical tripler arrays.