Analysis of nanosecond breaking of a high-density current in SOS diodes

Effect of a sharp (nanosecond) breaking of the reverse current with a density on the order of 10$^3$–10$^4$ A/cm$^2$ in a silicon diode upon switching from direct to reverse bias voltage (so-called silicon opening switch, or SOS effect) is widely used in nanosecond technologies of gigawatt powers. For detailed analysis of the SOS effect, we constructed a special setup with small stray inductance, which makes it possible to test single SOS diodes with a working area of 1–2 mm$^2$ in a wide range of current densities. Our experiments show, in particular, that the numerical model of the SOS effect developed at the Institute of Electrophysics, Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences successfully described the experimental results. It is also shown that the charge extracted from the diode structure by the reverse current exceeds the charge introduced by a direct current pulse by not more than 10%, indicating a relatively small role of ionization processes. The possibility to carry out experiments on single samples with a small surface area allows us to study the SOS effect and considerably facilitates investigations aimed at the perfection of the design of SOS diodes.