Expressions describing the growth and propagation of infinitesimal space-charge waves in the presence of a differential negative resistance are derived, and conditions for the inhibition of dipole waves and domains in

-GaAs of resistivity greater than 10Ω-cm at 300°K are obtained. Thermoelectric effects are estimated and found to be small for carrier densities much less than 10
15cm
-3. Taking the negative differential resistivity to be larger than the ohmic resistivity by a factor of 10
2leads to 1) condition for inhibition of dipole waves:

cm
-12) condition for inhibition of stable domains:

cm
-2when

= electron density and

= specimen length. The relevance of these results to explaining the phenomena observed in amplifying crystals is pointed out. It is suggested that the condition for amplification is

.