US-Sweden Cooperative Research: Numerical Modeling of Hot- Electron Effects as a Source of Excess Noise in Schottky- Barrier Diodes

该奖项将支持麻省大学邓廷伟博士与瑞典查尔姆斯理工大学应用电子物理系Erik Kollberg教授在电气工程方面的合作研究。该项目将重点研究用于毫米波和混频器的GaAS肖特基势垒二极管中的过量噪声。查尔默斯研究小组收集了毫米波二极管中存在与热电子效应有关的过量噪声的确凿实验证据。该小组在GaAs毫米波二极管的制造和从几百兆赫兹到大约一百兆赫兹频率的噪声测量方面都有能力。然而，对二极管噪声特性与偏置电流的理论理解通常是缺乏的。马萨诸塞大学的研究小组以其对半导体器件中的热电子和其他效应的数值模拟而闻名。拟议的研究将旨在：1)一个详细的理论模型（利用马萨诸塞大学可用的数值建模专业知识开发），以及2)一个实验验证（利用瑞典制造高质量肖特基二极管的专业知识）。该项目的结果有望导致用于毫米波应用的低噪声肖特基势垒二极管的改进设计。

This award will support collaborative research in electrical engineering between Dr. Ting-Wei Tang, University of Massachusetts and Professor Erik Kollberg, Department of Applied Electron Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, Goteburg, Sweden. The project will focus on the study of excess noise in GaAS Schottky-barrier diodes, designed for millimeter waves and mixers. Solid experimental evidence on the existence of excess noise in millimeter wave diodes related to hot electron effects has been collected by Chalmers research group. This group has competence in both the fabrication of GaAs millimeter wave diodes and noise measurements from frequencies of a few hundred MHz to about a hundred GHz. However, a theoretical understanding of the diode noise characteristics versus bias current is generally lacking. The University of Massachusetts group is well-known for its numerical modeling of hot-electron and other effects in semicon- ductor devices. The proposed research will aim at: l) a detailed theoretical model (to be developed utilizing the numerical modeling expertise available at the University of Massachusetts), and 2) an experimental verification (using Swedish expertise on fabricating high quality Schottky diodes). The results of this project are expected to lead to improved designs of low-noise Schottky-barrier diodes for millimeter wave application.