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AssigneeWestern Electric Company, Inc.
InventorsFrederick A. D'Altroy, Daniel J. Harrington, Gerald W. Miller
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A gate-controlled bidirectional switching device has two main terminals on opposite major surfaces of the device. A single gate terminal located adjacent one of the main terminals on one of the major surfaces receives a signal biased with respect to said one terminal to trigger the device into conduction. The device conducts current in either direction through the main terminals, depending on the polarity of an applied bias potential across the main terminals. By controlling the resistivities or the widths of two base regions in the device with respect to each other, a trigger current for switching the device from a nonconductive state to conduct current in the one direction is adjusted with respect to that required to switch the device to conduct current in the other direction.
A method of making a bidirectional semiconductor switching device comprising:
In a method of making a bidirectional semiconductor switching device of the type having first and second main terminals on the surface of a semiconductor body and a gate terminal adjacent the first main terminal, the gate terminal adapted to receive a current pulse to trigger the device to conduct current in either direction between the two main terminals, an improvement which tends to equalize current thresholds required to trigger the device to conduct in the one and in the other direction, the improvement comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.