Negative differential conductivity

JUN 01, 1970

The Gunn effect is only one of several interesting things that can happen when current decreases with increasing electric field in a semiconductor.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3022161

Esther M. Conwell

UNIQUE ELECTRICAL BEHAVIOR results when a system operates in a region of negative differential conductivity, where current density falls rather than rises with increasing electric fields. This type of conductivity is not infrequently found in semiconductors, where both factors that determine conductivity—density of carriers and their mobility (drift velocity developed per unit field)—may be easily varied. Under conditions of negative differential conductivity there is a tendency to enhance nonuniformities that would otherwise be damped. One of the many dramatic examples of such behavior is the Gunn effect.

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More about the authors

Esther M. Conwell, Solid‐State Research and Administration, General Telephone and Electronics Laboratories.