introduction : A tunnel diode is a highly doped semiconductor device that conducts current by quantum mechanical tunneling. it is also called as esaki diode named after leo esaki who got Nobel prize in physics for discovering electron tunneling in 1973. Tunneling Phenomenon: According to classical laws of physics, a particle must have an energy at least equal to the height of a potential-energy barrier if it has to move from one side of the barrier to the other. In other words, energy has to be supplied from some external source so that the electrons on one side of junction climb over the junction barrier to reach the other side. However if the barrier is thin such as in tunnel diode, the Schrodinger equation(Quantum Mechanics) indicates that there is a large probability that an electron will penetrate through the barrier. This will happen without any loss of energy on the part of electron. This quantum mechanical behavior is referred to as tunneling and the high-impurity P-N junctio...
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