3-11
Figure 3-7A.—Tunnel diode energy diagram with 50 millivolts bias.
Figure 3-7B.—Tunnel diode energy diagram with 50 millivolts bias.
Figure 3-8, view A, is the energy diagram of a tunnel diode in which the forward bias has been
increased to 450 millivolts. As you can see, the valence band and the conduction band no longer overlap
at this point, and tunneling can no longer occur. The portion of the curve in view B from point 2 to point
3 shows the decreasing current that occurs as the bias is increased, and the area of overlap becomes
