Experimental Investigation on the Interaction Mechanism Between Microwave Field and Semiconductor Material

An experimental method and apparatus for investigating the interaction mechanism between microwave field and semiconductor material are presented in this paper. The investigation is based on a dual-mode compressed rectangular cavity, which includes the TE₁₀₂ and TE₁₀₃ modes. The TE₁₀₂ mode is used for providing the stimulus signal, which supplies the microwave field during the experiment, and the TE₁₀₃ mode is for testing. The two modes are individually coupled to the cavity, and two band-stop filters are introduced to isolate the signals coming from both the modes. A directional coupler is utilized to monitor the power level of the stimulus signal. Experimental results demonstrate that microwave field may affect the inherent characteristics of indium phosphate, a typical kind of semiconductor materials, which eventually leads to the nonlinear behavior of the dielectric property. After the microwave field strength exceeds a critical value, the nonlinear behavior of the microwave materials becomes more and more drastic along with further increasing field strength, and according to the particular experiment setup, we conclude that the nonlinear behavior is not caused by microwave thermal effect, but some inherent characteristics of the material itself. In addition, the experimental method and apparatus can also be employed to predict the consequences of the non-thermal action of microwave effect of other high-power microwave material under microwave field.