Schottky-barrier diode and frequency performance

Wikipedia has a pretty good article about Schottky diodes:

Thx for the link .

The below lines clarified many things to me :):) Thx. It is often said that the Schottky diode is a "majority carrier" semiconductor device. This means that if the semiconductor body is doped N-type, only the N-type carriers (mobile electrons) play a significant role in normal operation of the device. The majority carriers are quickly injected into the conduction band of the metal contact on the other side of the diode to become free moving electrons. Therefore no slow, random recombination of N- and P- type carriers is involved, so that this diode can cease conduction faster than an ordinary PN rectifier diode. This property in turn allows a smaller device area, which also makes for a faster transition. This is another reason why Schottky diodes are useful in switch-mode power converters; the high speed of the diode means that the circuit can operate at frequencies in the range 200 kHz to 2 MHz, allowing the use of small inductors and capacitors with greater efficiency than would be possible with other diode types. Small-area Schottky diodes are the heart of RF detectors and mixers, which often operate up to 5 GHz.

Thx, Karthik Balaguru

That article must be either very old (older than Wikipedia itself??), or the author is rather uninformed. Certainly Schottky diodes are useful to well beyond 5GHz. For example, from the Avago website (where you can also find quite a few application notes on Schottky signal diodes),

"The HSCH-533x family of low barrier Beam Lead Schottky diodes are ideally suited for mixer and detector applications from 1-26GHz."

I suppose without much trouble you can find Schottkys intended for use to 40GHz and higher.

Cheers, Tom

On Dec 28, 11:23 am, karthikbalaguru wrote (quoted from a Wikipedia article): ...