IV.30 - Drift Step Recovery Diodes?

In traditional step recovery diodes charge is stored in the diode by means of a nearly steady-state forward current flow. That is, the forward bias exists continuously for times comparable to or longer than the hole and electron lifetimes in the active region. However, the more recent high-power drift step-recovery diode (DSRD) uses a short forward bias pulse to introduce stored charge to the device [Grek85], [Grek89], [Belk94], [Foci96]. Since the pulse width is considerably less than the carrier lifetimes, the charge is concentrated near the junctions, which is desirable for a sharp reverse step recovery. Other more complicated high-power devices have been designed with similar pulsed biasing in mind [Grek83],[Gorb88]. For instance, by using this "reversible injection control" [Grek89] two-terminal functional equivalents of the thyristor have been made, which do not suffer from current localization effects characteristic of three terminal devices.

Typical DSRDs are capable of sharpening kilovolt pulses, with rise times on the order of a few nanoseconds.

Dr. Alexei Kardo-Sysoev reports that a circuit consisting of 120 stacked DSRDs has been used to sharpen 100 kV pulses, to rise times on the order of 1 ns, resulting in 100 MW of switched power [Kard96].

Click here for the references noted above.

DSRDs are manufactured by their Russian inventors, and are represented in the US by a firm called "Moose Hill Enterprises".