Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges the support of many people and organizations in making this thesis possible. In particular, the author thanks Dr. Walter J. Chudobiak for suggesting the topic, and for making the financial and laboratory resources available, particularly at Avtech Electrosystems Ltd. The author also thanks Dr. David Walkey at Carleton University for acting as his faculty advisor, and Dr. N. Garry Tarr at Carleton University for providing guidance on device fabrication issues.

He also thanks Lyall Berndt, Carol Adams, and Chris Pawlowicz at Carleton University for performing most of the device fabrication in the laboratory.

Dr. Alexei Kardo-Sysoev at the A. F. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Science in St. Petersburg is also thanked for his interesting correspondence regarding the design and use of drift step recovery diodes. Dr. Arokia Nathan of the University of Waterloo is thanked for suggesting an approach for quantifying the impact of thermal effects on the diodes described in this thesis.

The author also acknowledges the generous financial support from the governments of Canada and Ontario, in the form of scholarships from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and Carleton University.