Abstract

The gate burnout (irreversible breakdown) of GaAs MESFET has been studied using two-dimensional (2-D) numerical simulation and experimental measurements of 10 ns pulsed gate-source I-V characteristics. It is shown, that at some critical level of gate avalanche current the gate current instability appears. The instability results in formation of a negative differential conductivity (NDC) region on the S-shape gate-source I-V characteristic, spatial instability of avalanche current and formation of high density current filaments.