High-Frequency Gallium Arsenide Point-Contact Rectifiers

Silicon and germanium semiconductor materials have been used in point-contact rectifiers for many years and numerous types of rectifiers employing these two materials are commercially available today. Technical papers too numerous to mention have been published covering the important features of these Group IV semiconductor materials. More recently, there has been increased interest in some of the semiconductor materials generally referred to as the intermetallic compounds. These are formed by a combination of some of the Group III and Group V elements and tend to possess some of the better properties of both silicon and germanium.* Due to the higher energy gaps, higher electron mobilities and, in some eases, the lower dielectric constants of some of these I I I - V compounds, theoretically they should make efficient highfrequency rectifiers and should be able to operate at higher temperatures than either silicon or germanium.f Gallium arsenide (GaAs), one of the I I I - V intermetallic compounds, appears to be very attractive for high-frequency point-contact rectifiers. * A good review of the work t h a t has been done on the Group III-V compounds appears in a recent book. 1 f T h e importance of the semiconducting compounds was perhaps first discerned by H. Wclker in Germany early in the 1950's.2 259