High-voltage gallium arsenide step recovery diodes

Experimental results for high-voltage GaAs step recovery diodes (SRDs) are presented in the paper. All of diodes have been developed for the intended application of waveshaping in pulse generators and fabricated by liquid-phase epitaxy technology. SRDs operate primarily due to charge storage with pulsed forward biasing and have a sharp reverse recovery transient. Diode switching times as low as 400 ps were demonstrated for a 800 V transient into 50 Ω load. This result was compared to experimental results obtained elsewhere and satisfied the fastest switching speed for SRDs with a few hundreds volts of operating voltage. It is shown that even with inherently lower carrier lifetimes GaAs might be considered as alternative material for SRDs. Furthermore, GaAs SRDs offer shortest delay time (compare to high voltage Si DSRDs) for triggering pulse which highly desirable in some pulse generation circuits.