Dependence of avalanche-induced minority current on multiplication factor

The mechanism proposed by Matsunaga et al. to explain their observation of the injection of minority carriers into the substrate of a saturated n-channel MOST does not explain similar experimental results obtained using n-p-n bipolar transisitors. The alternative optical model proposed by Childs et al. does, however, apply to both measurements if it is assumed that the probability of an electron emitting a photon when crossing a reverse-biased junction is proportional to (Mn ¿ I)/Mn, where Mn is the electron multiplication factor in the junction.