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A tunnel diode or Esaki diode is a type of semiconductor diode that has effectively "negative resistance" due to the quantum mechanical effect called tunneling. It was invented in August 1957 by Leo Esaki and Yuriko Kurose when working at Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo, now known as Sony .
For example, I–V data can be used to study anomalies, locate maximum or minimum curve slopes, and perform reliability analyses. A typical application is finding a semiconductor diode's reverse bias leakage current and doing forward and reverse bias voltage sweeps and current measurements to generate its I–V curve. [3]
tunnel diode, [54] [43] resonant tunneling diode [55] and other semiconductor diodes using the tunneling mechanism [56] Gunn diode [57] and other diodes using the transferred electron mechanism [56] IMPATT diode, [43] [57] TRAPATT diode and other diodes using the impact ionization mechanism [56] Some NPN transistors with E-C reverse biased ...
Under reverse bias, the diode equation's exponential term is near 0, so the current is near the somewhat constant reverse current value (roughly a picoampere for silicon diodes or a microampere for germanium diodes, [1] although this is obviously a function of size).
It occurs in a reverse biased p-n diode when the electric field enables tunneling of electrons from the valence to the conduction band of a semiconductor, leading to numerous free minority carriers which suddenly increase the reverse current. [1]
These can be made to conduct in reverse bias (backward), and are correctly termed reverse breakdown diodes. This effect called Zener breakdown, occurs at a precisely defined voltage, allowing the diode to be used as a precision voltage reference. The term Zener diodes is colloquially applied to several types of breakdown diodes, but strictly ...
Consequently, tunnel diode logic circuits required a means to reset the diode after each logical operation. However, a simple tunnel diode gate offered little isolation between inputs and outputs and had low fan in and fan out. More complex gates, with additional tunnel diodes and bias power supplies, overcame some of these limitations. [7]
In semiconductor devices, a backward diode (also called back diode [2]) is a variation on a Zener diode or tunnel diode having a better conduction for small reverse biases (for example –0.1 to –0.6 V) than for forward bias voltages. The reverse current in such a diode is by tunneling, which is also known as the tunnel effect. [3] [4] [5]