Suppression of Dynamic Current Leakage in Avalanche S-Diode Switching Circuits

This work investigates the dynamic current leakage of \(S\)-diode which is a GaAs-based avalanche switch doped with deep Fe acceptor traps. The dynamic leakage has negative effect on superfast switching parameters of this unique device and here we suggest an original way of reducing the leakage by means of circuit design. It is shown that an additional bias for avalanche S-diode in the current pulse generation circuit forms a negatively charged layer of iron traps near the electron-injecting junction. As a result the concentration of nonequilibrium electrons goes down which leads to a decrease in leakage current by ∼3–4 times and a rise in S-diode switching voltage. The results were obtained in the experimental study and are approved by calculation.