Abstract: A method is presented for accelerating the injection of minority carriers into an insulating layer overlying a semiconductor substrate under conditions less severe than required to produce impact ionization. The method is useful in characterizing parameters of field effect integrated circuit components subject to various charge instability mechanisms and may also be useful as a means for altering charge conditions in various non-volatile memory devices. A field effect device structure comprising a semiconductor p-n junction adjacent to an insulated gate electrode is utilized in which a depletion region is created under the gate electrode in the presence of alternating forward and reverse biasing of the p-n junction. During the forward bias condition minority carriers are injected into the semiconductor substrate adjacent to the gate electrode structure.