Analysis of microwave characteristics of photoconductive IC structures

A one-dimensional analytic solution for the microwave photoresponse of an optically modulated semiconductor channel is presented. This extends the existing treatments by including the effects of nonuniform channel cross sections and conductivity, nonuniform optical illumination, field-dependent mobilities, nonzero dielectric relaxation times, arbitrary electrical and optical excitation frequencies, and full coupled bipolar carrier transport. The solution is continuous over the full range of electric field intensities and thereby describes both the saturated and nonsaturated regimes of the photocurrent. Only the low-level generation case is considered, and trapping effects and diffusion are not included. This model allows the effects of optical stimulation in many typical IC structures to be assessed from dc up through the microwave range of frequencies.