Noise in Solid State Devices

The purpose of this chapter is to present a survey of noise in solid-state devices. This chapter also discusses the various noise sources and this is applied to p-n junction diodes, Schottky barrier diodes, tunnel diodes, Josephson junctions, bipolar transistors, junction field effect transistors (JFETs), and metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) The most important sources of noise in solid-state devices are thermal noise, shot noise, generation-recombination (g-r) noise, and flicker noise. Moreover, for semiconductor material one encounters noise due to the generation and recombination of carriers. It shows up as fluctuations in the resistance of the sample that can be detected, in turn, by applying a voltage to the sample and measuring the fluctuating current. For simple cases, the noise can be described by one fluctuating number of carriers; either electrons or holes. This is true for the noise due to traps, deep-lying donors or acceptors, Shockley-Read-Hall centers when there is a predominant lifetime.