Pressure effects in AlAs/In_xGa_1-xAs/GaAs resonant tunnelling diodes for application in micromachined sensors

This paper reports the current--voltage characteristics of 001-oriented AlAs/In_xGa_1-xAs/GaAs resonant tunnelling diodes (RTDs) as a function of uniaxial external stress applied parallel to the 110 and the 1\bar10 orientations, and the output characteristics of the GaAs pressure sensor based on the pressure effect on the RTDs. Under 110 stress, the resonance peak voltages of the RTDs shift to more positive voltages. For 1\bar10 stress, the peaks shift toward more negative voltages. The resonance peak voltage is linearly dependent on the 110 and 1\bar10 stresses and the linear sensitivities are up to 0.69mV/MPa, -0.69mV/MPa respectively. For the pressure sensor, the linear sensitivity is up to 0.37mV/kPa.