High-voltage planar p-n junctions

A concentric ring junction has been devised to prevent surface breakdown of a planar junction. By properly choosing the spacing between the main junction and the ring, the ring junction acts like a voltage divider at the surface. In addition, the ring junction minimizes the effect of the junction curvature at the periphery of a planar junction. Devices fabricated with three such rings showed breakdown voltages of 2000 and 3200 volts on n-type silicon with impurity concentrations 6.5 × 10 ¹³ and 2.5 × 10 ¹³ cm ^-3 , respectively. That the structure operated as proposed was corroborated by comparison of the reverse leakage current with a one parameter fit to a theoretically calculated current obtained from the approximated volume of the space charge regions. These results together with the photo response measurements indicate that the field-limiting ring junction can be used successfully to obtain high-voltage planar p-n junctions.