Advantages of BARITT diode | disadvantages of BARITT diode

This page covers advantages and disadvantages of BARITT diode. It mentions BARITT diode advantages or benefits and BARITT diode disadvantages or drawbacks.

What is BARITT diode?

Introduction:
It has drift time similar to IMPATT diode. Holes or Electrons which traverse drift regions are produced by injecting minority charge carriers from forward biased junction. It operates from 4 to 8 GHz.

In BARITT diode, drift of minority carriers is due to "Thermionic emission" rather than "Avalanche effect". As a result BARITT diodes are less noisy compare to IMPATT diode.

The BARITT diode can be constructed with different structures viz. p-n-p, p-n-i-p, p-n-metal, metal-n-metal etc. The figure-1 depicts p⁺ - n - p⁺ structure. Refer difference between BARITT vs IMPATT vs TRAPATT diodes>>.

Following are the applications of BARITT diode.
• Mixer
• Large signal Oscillator
• Small signal amplifier

Benefits or advantages of BARITT diode

Following are the benefits or advantages of BARITT diode:
➨They are less noisy due to thermionic emissions compare to IMPATT diodes.
➨It offers noise figure of about 15 dB as BARITT amplifier made of silicon and operating at C-band.

Drawbacks or disadvantages of BARITT diode

Following are the disadvantages of BARITT diode:
➨It has relatively narrower bandwidth.
➨It has lower power handling capability which decreases in proportion to square of the frequency. It can produce lower power output which is just few milliwatts.
➨Efficiency of the BARITT diode decreases with increase in the frequency. It is about 5% for low frequencies.