Cylindrical microdischarge cavities 200–400 μm in diameter and 0.5–5 mm in depth have been fabricated in silicon and operated at room temperature with neon or nitrogen at specific power loadings beyond 10 kW/cm3. The discharges are azimuthally uniform and stable operation at N2 and Ne pressures exceeding 1 atm and ∼600 Torr, respectively, has been realized for 400 μm diameter devices. Spectroscopic measurements on neon discharges demonstrate that the device behaves as a hollow cathode discharge for pressures >50 Torr. As evidenced by emission from Ne and Ne+ (2P,2F) states as well as N2 (C→B) fluorescence (316–492 nm), these discharge devices are intense sources of ultraviolet and visible radiation and are suitable for fabrication as arrays.

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Even with the use of variable transformations, quantum-well (QW)-laser models based on the standard rate equations and a linear gain-saturation term can possess multiple dc solution regimes for nonnegative values of injection current. In this paper, we demonstrate analytically that rate-equationbased models that employ more realistic gain-saturation terms can be transformed so that they do indeed possess a unique solution regime. We also present circuit-level implementations of these models suitable for use in SPICE. Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland. His research interests include VLSI design methodologies and optimization for performance, reliability and manufacturability, modeling and simulation of semiconductor devices and circuits, high-speed optoelectronic circuits, and fully optical network systems. He holds four patents and has published more than 250 papers and coauthored six books: Design Automation for Timing-Driven Layout Synthesis (New York: , the University of Arizona, and the National Science Foundation. Prior research activities were in the areas of gas discharge lasers, gas phase nonlinear optics, FIR optically pumped lasers, and optical nonlinearities in semiconductor quantum wells. Currently, his research is addressing III-V device design and fabrication issues for photonic circuit applications and the application of MEMS technologies to optical network switching devices.

The electron ionization coefficients for Ar, Kr, and Xe have been measured in the low E/N region [(0.5–4) ×10−16 V cm2] using a drift-tube apparatus. At low field values, the ionization coefficient was found to be anomalously large, a fact attributed to surface photoelectron emission from radiating metastables. This contribution also explains the discrepancy between earlier measurements and recent calculations based on the transport equation. The measurements were analyzed on the basis of two contributions to the ionization rate and calculations of the transport equation, yielding a revised set of inelastic cross sections which differ from earlier ones primarily in the inclusion of shape resonances.

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