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Apr 29, 2024
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PH 360 - Physics of Semiconductor Materials and Devices3 lecture hours 3 lab hours 4 credits
Course Description
This subject is intended to provide students with the fundamentals of semiconductor physics and its application to common semiconductor devices. The course starts with an in-depth look at the theory of semiconductors including energy gap, Fermi-Dirac statistics, mobility of electrons and holes, influence of temperature on conductivity, doping, photoconductivity, drift and diffusion of charge carriers and the (Shockley) ideal diode equation. Then, properties of the abrupt p-n junction are studied and applied to various practical devices including the signal diode, zener diode, varactor diode, photo-diode, light-emitting diode, solar cell, bipolar junction transistor, and finally field effect transistors. The course has a strong laboratory component. About half the experiments illustrate fundamental properties of semiconductor materials and half explore the characteristics and properties of a variety of semiconductor devices. This course cannot be taken for credit by students who have credit for PH 361 . (prereq: PH 2030 )
Course Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:
• understand the fundamentals of crystal structures, including the unit cell and lattice constant, and to use Miller indices to describe crystal planes
• understand the electron energy band theory description of metals, semiconductors, and insulators
• understand the fundamentals of intrinsic semiconductors, including the energy gap, how conductivity depends on temperature through charge carrier density and how photons can influence conductivity
• understand how doping influences carrier concentration and how this is related to the Fermi level
• use the Hall effect to determine carrier type and concentration
• understand current in terms of drift and diffusion of electrons and holes and how these are related to mobility, concentration gradients, and electric field
• understand the fundamentals of the operation of the p-n junction in forward and reverse bias including knowledge of drift and diffusion currents, generation and recombination currents, contact potential, reverse bias capacitance and breakdown
• understand the basic operation of optical p-n junction devices including photo-detectors, solar cells, LEDs and LASER diodes
• understand the fundamentals of BJT operation including diffusion of minority carriers from base to emitter, how this leads to current gain and have knowledge of the mechanisms behind saturation and cutoff
• understand the fundamentals of JFET operation including gate voltage control of drain current
• understand the basic operation of the MOSFET including depletion and inversion and to understand how drain current depends on the drain and gate voltages
Prerequisites by Topic
• Electric and magnetic fields, electric potential, the Bohr atom, basic quantum theory
Course Topics
• crystal structure (2 classes)
• energy band theory (1 class)
• charge carrier concentrations: Fermi statistics (3 classes)
• charge carrier drift and diffusion (4 classes)
• Hall effect (1 class)
• thermistors and photoconductivity (2 classes)
• p-n junction (4 classes)
• photonic p-n junction devices (3 classes)
• bipolar junction transistor (3 classes)
• JFET, MOSFET (2 classes)
• plasma processing and device fabrication (1 class)
• integrated circuits (1 class)
Laboratory Topics
• Hall effect
• majority carrier type and concentration using hot and four-point probes
• extrinsic to intrinsic conductivity transition with temperature
• band gap determination by photonic absorption: direct and indirect
• carrier lifetime in a CdS photocell
• p-n junction reverse bias capacitance
• BJT current gain and Early effect
• MOSFET: linear and saturation characteristics
• LED as photodetector and I-V characteristics of various two terminal devices: rectifiers, breakdown diodes, LEDs and solar cell
Coordinator
Richard Mett
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