Pulse Burnout of Microwave Mixer Diodes

The measured rectangular dc pulse burnout energies are presented for 240 diodes representing 18 types of point contact mixer diodes commonly found in radar mixers. These measurements are compared to previously measured burnout energies on a few mixer diodes and to predictions of burnout energies using two burnout models found in the literature. The measured burnout energies tended to exhibit a lognormal distribution with pulse width. Further, it is shown that little or no variation in burnout energy occurs as a function of the manufacturer´s quoted noise figure. Finally, a comparison between the measured dc pulse burnout energies and available rf pulse burnout energies indicates that the rf data follow the same trend in burnout energy versus pulse width as the dc data.