The influence of microwave pulse width on the thermal burnout effect of a PIN diode limiting-amplifying system

Damage accumulation mechanism in PIN diode limiters induced via multiple microwave pulses

“…Our experimental data for the effect of damage accumulation in limiters has strong discreteness, i.e., the microwave damage effects even in the same batch of devices having the same parameters were not exactly the same 11 . The obtained experimental data is processed to remove the larger and smaller values of the PIN limiter insertion loss after each set of microwave parameters, and retain the intermediate insertion loss value for analysis.…”

“…The basic working mechanism of a PIN diode limiter is based on the conductivity modulation effect 11 . In particular, a large input microwave pulse will reduce the diode impedance to a significantly low value, leading to an impedance mismatch that reflects a majority of the input signal power towards its source.…”

“…Therefore, many theoretical, numerical simulation, and experimental studies have been conducted to analyze the damage effects of microwave pulses on the PIN diode limiters. Previous studies have indicated that junction burnout, metallization burnout, and thermal second breakdown are the primary causes for the burnout effect caused by microwave pulses on the PIN diodes [8][9][10][11] . However, most of these research works focused on the effects of a single pulse on the PIN diode limiters, and regarded the maximum temperature in a semiconductor device reaching the melting point of the specific semiconductor material or the electrodes as the criterion of the occurrence of a burnout phenomenon 1 .…”

Impact of The Structure on The Thermal Burnout Effect Induced by Microwave Pulses of PIN Limiter Diodes

“…In the numerical simulation of the electromagnetic effect of microwave devices, the maximum temperature criterion in a semiconductor device as the melting point of the specific semiconductor material or electrodes is usually used to determine a burnout phenomenon in the simulation. 11,[16][17][18][19] Therefore, the burnout power thresholds of the PIN limiters are at first simulated based on the peak temperature inside the device reaching the melting point of the material (silicon=1688K), as…”

“…Thus, many studies have been carried out for damage effects of the microwave pulse for the PIN limiter. Junction burnout, metallization burnout and thermal second breakdown are indicated to be the main cause of the burnout effect by microwave pulses of the PIN diodes [8][9][10][11] . However, few literatures about the impact of the structure, especially the I layer thickness and the anode diameter of the PIN diode, on the thermal burnout effect induced by microwave pulses have been reported.…”