Semiconductor Devices (ELEN90091)

This subject serves as an introduction to semiconductor devices. It describes the fundamentals, theory, material and physical properties of semiconductor devices. The following topics will be covered.

Fundamentals: Crystal properties and of the growth of bulk crystals and of epitaxial layers. Physical concepts related to atoms and electrons. These concepts may include the photoelectric effect, the Bohr model, quantum mechanics, and the periodic table.

Energy bands and charge carriers in semiconductors: Bonding forces and energy bands in solids, charge carriers in semiconductors, carrier concentrations, the drift of carriers in electric and magnetic fields, and the Fermi level.

Excess carriers in semiconductors: Optical absorption, luminescence, carrier lifetime and photoconductivity, and the diffusion of carriers.

Junctions: Fabrication of pn junctions, equilibrium conditions, forward and reverse biased junctions in steady state, reverse bias breakdown, transient and AC conditions, metal-semiconductor junctions and heterojunctions. In the next part of the subject

PN junction diodes: Junction diodes, tunnel diodes, photodiodes, and light-emitting diodes and lasers.

Bipolar junction transistors (BJTs): Amplification and switching, fundamentals of BJT operation, BJT fabrication, minority carrier distributions and terminal currents, generalised biasing, switching, the frequency limitations of transistors, and heterojunction bipolar transistors.

Field effect transistors (FETs): Topics may include junction FETs, the metal semiconductor FET and the metal-insulator-semiconductor FET.

Additional topics (if time permits): Integrated circuits, pnpn switching devices, and microwave devices.