zener breakdown

Question

Zener breakdown in heavily doped diode is due to:

RankGuru · Accepted Answer

Zener breakdown occurs in heavily doped p-n junctions which have very narrow depletion layers.
- Because the layer is so thin, even a relatively small reverse voltage creates a very high electric field $(\sim 10^6 	ext{ V/m})$.
- This field is strong enough to pull electrons directly out of their covalent bonds in the valence band and transfer them to the conduction band.
- This process is called **internal field emission** or **field ionization** (a quantum tunneling effect).

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zener breakdown

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