Spiking in a semiconductor device: Experiments and comparison with a model

Silicon ${\mathit{p}}^{+}$-${\mathit{n}}^{+}$-p-${\mathit{n}}^{\mathrm{-}}$ devices exhibit periodic and nonperiodic self-organized current oscillations. It is shown that the oscillations are caused either by spatiotemporal spiking of a current filament which decays immediately after its generation or by homogeneous relaxation oscillations of the current density. Moreover, the experiments give clear evidence for complex spatiotemporal spiking, i.e., a filament emerges and vanishes in an irregular temporal sequence. A comparison with a simple model reveals good qualitative agreement with the observed bifurcation scenarios. © 1996 The American Physical Society.