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Avalanche breakdown (or the avalanche effect) is a phenomenon that can occur in both insulating and semiconducting materials. It is a form of electric current multiplication that can allow very large currents within materials which are otherwise good insulators. It is a type of electron avalanche.
NXP 7030AL - N-channel TrenchMOS logic level FET IRF640 Power Mosfet die. The power MOSFET is the most widely used power semiconductor device in the world. [3] As of 2010, the power MOSFET accounts for 53% of the power transistor market, ahead of the insulated-gate bipolar transistor (27%), RF power amplifier (11%) and bipolar junction transistor (9%). [24]
In electronics, an avalanche diode is a diode (made from silicon or other semiconductor) that is designed to experience avalanche breakdown at a specified reverse bias voltage. The junction of an avalanche diode is designed to prevent current concentration and resulting hot spots, so that the diode is undamaged by the breakdown.
For a device that makes use of the secondary breakdown effect see Avalanche transistor. Secondary breakdown is a failure mode in bipolar power transistors. In a power transistor with a large junction area, under certain conditions of current and voltage, the current concentrates in a small spot of the base-emitter junction.
The first paper dealing with avalanche transistors was Ebers & Miller (1955).The paper describes how to use alloy-junction transistors in the avalanche breakdown region in order to overcome speed and breakdown voltage limitations which affected the first models of such kind of transistor when used in earlier computer digital circuits.
The device operates by shunting excess current when the induced voltage exceeds the avalanche breakdown potential. It is a clamping device, suppressing all overvoltages above its breakdown voltage. It automatically resets when the overvoltage goes away, but absorbs much more of the transient energy internally than a similarly rated crowbar device.
In an avalanche photodiode the original charge carrier is created by the absorption of a photon. The impact ionization process is used in modern cosmic dust detectors like the Galileo Dust Detector [ 2 ] and dust analyzers Cassini CDA , [ 3 ] Stardust CIDA and the Surface Dust Analyser [ 4 ] for the identification of dust impacts and the ...
Both breakdown types are present in Zener diodes with the Zener effect predominating at lower voltages and avalanche breakdown at higher voltages. They are used to generate low-power stabilized supply rails from a higher voltage and to provide reference voltages for circuits, especially stabilized power supplies.