This isn't particularly cursed. I mean we've had avalanche pulse generators for well over half a century easily. It's just exploiting semiconductor characteristics they don't teach you in the usual garbage undergrad textbooks.
Garbage -> Sedra and Smith particularly - hate it, anything which kicks you in the nuts right up front with Laplace and networks abstractions, anything from Pearson - have never seen a good one.
Good -> Razavi (Fundamentals of Microelectronics), Art of Electronics, most Jim Williams stuff (AN's and articles), Bowick RF Circuit design. They're actually useful.
I find Sedra/Smith a terrible introduction, but a good reference. It's nice once you've already built an intuition for how things work to be able to go back & build up the mathematical models, but trying to understand the behavior of circuits from the math first is a bad order.
I wonder how consistent the breakdown voltages are between manufacturers?
I mean, I am sure there is some spec, but is it not just a minimum in this case?
Out of interest, please could you give some examples of textbooks you consider garbage, and some you consider not to be (undergrad or otherwise)?
Good -> Razavi (Fundamentals of Microelectronics), Art of Electronics, most Jim Williams stuff (AN's and articles), Bowick RF Circuit design. They're actually useful.
I wonder how consistent the breakdown voltages are between manufacturers? I mean, I am sure there is some spec, but is it not just a minimum in this case?