An observation of large and long current pulses below the breakdown voltage of PIN diode

PIN diodes with high resistive n-layer exhibit very interesting pulses, whose lengths are 10 μs-2 s and heights are 0.001~0.25 A/cm ² below and above the avalanche breakdown voltage (≈1400 V). Especially, large pulses (0.1~0.25 A/cm²) occurred at ≈100 V lower voltage than the avalanche breakdown. In these operations, breakdown currents prefer some discrete values not depending on the applied voltage directly. To consider these phenomena, the author proposes a new idea that there was a stable high current density operation (1A/cm² order) near the avalanche breakdown voltage