Experimental studies of hot electron effects in GaAs MESFET's.

We propose a new experimental technique of measuring the effective electron temperature in the channel of GaAs MESFETs. This technique utilizes the exponential dependance of the gate current in GaAs MESFETs on electron temperature in the channel. Using this new technique we measured the electron temperature as a funtion of the gate and drain bias in depletion mode ion-implanted GaAs MESFETs. These results indicate, that the random component of the electron motion is considerably reduced in constricted channels in field effect transistors.