Characteristics of varactor diodes biased into avalanche

Johnston, DeLoach, and Cohen have recently reported on the generation of microwave energy from reverse biased p-n junctions which were driven into the avalanche region. The present paper describes the performance obtained from diffused and epitaxial diffused silicon and epitaxial diffused gallium arsenide diodes designed primarily for parametric amplifier, harmonic generator and microwave limiter applications. Oscillations have been obtained over the range from 6 - 50 Gc, some of which seem to be parametrically related as first noted by DeLoach. Pulse power outputs in the several milliwatt range have been obtained with a wide variety of commercial varactors.