Spike leakage of thin Si PIN limiters

Thin PIN diode limiters (10 μm or less) are used to protect sensitive microwave components from fast-risetime microwave pulses having energies exceeding 1 to 10 μJ. This paper analyzes and experimentally confirms the performance of these PIN limiters. It is shown that spike leakage is a transit-time effect that is controlled by the mobility of the carriers. A p-type background I-region should yield less spike leakage energy for a given thickness. It is proposed that the hysteresis effect observed when limiters are operated under cw conditions is due to space charge effects and stored charges remaining after the reverse-biased half cycle. Detailed agreement between the measured and calculated device voltage waveforms requires accurate modeling of the circuit parasitics because of the high rate-of-change currents arising from avalanching